About

The goal of the Linux-Society (LS, dating back to the mid-90s as a professional club and tech-mentoring group) has been a purely-democratic Information Society; many of the articles are sociological in nature. The LS was merged with Perl/Unix of NY to form multi-layered group that included advocacy, project-oriented learning by talented high school students: textbook constructivism. Linux has severe limitations such that it is useless for any computer that will, say, print or scan. It is primarily used for webservers and embedded devices such as the Android. (Google is high-invested in it).

Technology is problematic. During the heyday of technology (1990s), it seemed it had the democratic direction Lewis Mumford said it should have in his seminal
Technics and Civilization.

Today, we are effectively stuck with Windows as Linux is poor on the desktop and has cultured a maladaptive following. Apple is prohibitive, and all other operating systems lack drivers, including Google's Android, an offshoot of linux.

In the late 90s there was hope for new kernels such as LibOS and ExoOS that would bare their hardware to programs, some of which would be virtual machines such as Java uses. Another important player was the L4 system that is a minor relation to the code underlying the Apple's systems. It was highly scientific but fell into the wrong hangs, apparently, and has suffered from having no progress on the desktop. There is a version, "SE" that is apparently running in many cell phones as specialized telecom chips, but is proprietary. SE's closed nature was only recently revealed, which is important because it is apparently built from publicly-owned code as it is not a "clean room" design it may violate public domain protections, and most certainly violates the widely-accepted social contract.

Recent attempts to enjoin into L4 development as an advocate for "the people" have been as frustrating (and demeaning) as previous attempts with the usual attacks to self-esteem by maladaptive "hacks" being reinforced by "leadership" (now mostly university professors).

In short, this leaves us with Windows, which is quite a reversal if you have read earlier posts here. But, upon Windows, we have free and open software development systems in the forms of GTK+ (the windows usually used on Linux) and the Minimal GNU Windows (MinGW and MSYS) systems. It is very likely this direction that development should go (that is, on Windows) such that s/w can then be ported to a currently-valid microkernel system that includes a driver system that can be adapted by hardware developers to reuse of their windows and apple drivers.

From a brief survey of L4, it appears that the last clean copy was the DROPS system of the early 2010s, was a German effort that used the Unix-like "OS kit" from an American University.

If we are going to be stuck on Windows, then it seems that a high level approach to free and open systems integration, such as creating fully transparent mouse communication between apps so that they can seamlessly work together as a single desktop (rather than deliberately conflicting). This would be very helpful for GIMP and Inkscape, both leading graphics programs that are strong in the special ways, but suffer from an inability to easily interrelate.

Another important issue is the nature, if you can call it that, of the "geek" or "hack." Technology is formed democratically but "harvested" authoritarian-ly --if I can coin a term that Mumford might use. Authority is plutarchy: a combination of aristocracy and oligarchy that is kept alive after all these millennia by using, or maligning, the information society as a part of the civilizing (or law-giving) process that embraces the dialectic as its method. Democratic restoration, that is to put humanity back on an evolutionary (and not de-evolutionary) track, I think, will require the exclusion of the "geek" from decision-making. As is, the free/open s/w culture attempts to give leadership to those who write the most lines of code --irrespective of their comprehension of the real world or relationship with normal users. We need normal people to somehow organize around common sense (rather than oligarchic rationalism) to bring to life useful and cohesive software and communications systems.

Interestingly, the most popular page on this site is about Carl Rogers' humanistic psychology, and has nothing to do with technology.




Sunday, November 19, 2006

Pure Insanity: The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act

Will Potter, a journalist who follows civil rights and green rights-- who has also followed the SHAC 7 trial-- gives a good analysis of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act: Green is the New Red

He says that the new bill changes nothing for the direct action activists; they have long been outlawed: groups such as the Animal Liberation Front.

He points out that the major purpose of the law is attack pacifist activists who use civil disobedience as developed by Thoreau, Martin Luther King, and Gandhi. The act says that because actions like sit-ins may cost a corporation revenue they are terror; the act targets mainstream non-violent activism.

It also confirms that sanctioning cruelty is a priority of the US government-- to be kind, according to congress, is to be cruel. This policy resembles the first defense of hunters; if you tell hunters that killing is cruel, then they will tell you that you are for hurting their feelings. Hunters have homicidal thoughts as often as not; what they won't tell you, or maybe they will if you ask, is that you very likely deserve to die for being so cruel as to criticize their cruelty.

As a veteran of the terror attack on the WTC on 9/11/2001, I know what terror is. Congress and the courts are simply liars; they are using our fears of terror to protect cruelty, a form of terror in of itself, albeit to animals. Civil disobedience is not terror; police brutality is.

Terror, as practiced by experts such as bin Laden, specifically targets the glands in the center of the brains of a population with the stress of horror so as to inflict them with post traumatic stress disorder.

Any other use of the word terror is an insult to all the people who have made sacrifices as rescuers, in wars, or in defense of others; they are heros and have very likely suffered trauma disorders. The US congress has chosen to insult the most dedicated and loyal members of American society. In many respects, this act of congress has nothing to do with eco-terror.

Another equally sickening aspect of the bill was support for the it by the ACLU. In a letter that was used to endorse the bill written by the ACLU, the writers offered the following contradictory text:

Hubert H. Humphrey once said "Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent and debate."

~and~

When Congress singles out a group on one side of a debate for criminal penalties, it must be careful to avoid silencing the discussion, dissent and debate that is so fundamental to our freedom.

Full text:http://www.aclu.org/images/general/asset_upload_file809_27356.pdf

Here the ACLU admits that they act is purely unconstitutional: the government, as if you don't know, cannot under the laws of the land single anyone out for punishment specifically because their beliefs. Furthermore, humane beliefs are spiritual and faith-based in nature; the first amendment protects faith as much as free speech.

In this I actually see a silver lining to this anti-terror bill. Like Bush's arrogant abuse of the American people shows the true agenda of the American elite, this bill shows the world how sick the US goverment has become. It show's how cruel and ignorant elected officials are, and how vulnerable they have made the nation to the new, or neo, terror: complete control by multi-national corporate control.

Congress and the courts (not to mention the ACLU) have traveled so far away from the intent of the Constitution and the rights amendments (which are the basis for the Charter of the UN as well as most national constitutions) so as to put into affect the 2nd amendment-- the right to take military (malitia) action against treachery coming across the borders (globalism) and pure corruption within the nation (today's congress).

If you are interested, I have created a group based on Shay's rebellion and the Whiskey rebellion. These rebellions were a reaction to the corruption and chaos that followed the American revolution; they forced the formation of the constitutional conventions.

These rebellions, described as anarchy, stabilized the US.

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