Older blog entries for lkcl (starting at number 417)

Five SGI workstations - "Indy's" - and two "Indigo 2"s, one of them set up as a high-end 3D workstation, are available for sale at a "name-the-sensible-and-reasonable-price" kind of arrangement, at a local shop here in Den Haag.

The people who have them basically haven't the time or inclination to find out the market value, and would trust free software people to _name_ a reasonable value.

I'm going to the UK, and MIGHT be able to arrange transport on Sunday to get them there, otherwise they will need to go in the post or by courier.

I'm happy to act as the intermediary for anyone who wants them - e.g. by paying for them cash immediately and you getting some money to me some other way, packing them, arranging transport (if to the UK) or simply putting you in touch with this shop to make your own arrangements.

if you ARE interested, and want them shipped, TELL me quickly - before mid-morning (i'm on GMT+2) of Friday (27th July), so that I have time to get some suitable boxes if you want them shipped.

otherwise you will of course be able to contact this shop direct, yourselves, should you so wish.

i cannot guarantee it but i feel that they are the kinds of people with whom a charity could negotiate, if you _are_ a charity or know of a charity that could truly make use of these 7 fantastic blue machines.

very strange situation i'm presently in.

no work, and an overwhelming desire to change direction.

or more specifically, having learned what it is that i needed to know (in computing), i can now utilise the best of what i've learned (and discard it!) and avoid the worst of what i've been through (which many people would not properly recover from) and start something entirely different (but not new in fact very old) and obvious at the same time.

i'm really looking forward to what's next - whatever it is.

and it's probably the reason why i haven't found even a place to live.

in the meantime, i'm selling all my available computer equipment, which leaves me in the hilarious situation of having used about eight computers over the past four months. just when i get them set up to the point where i can use them, they go to a new home.

it's lucky that i like debian, that there is good internet connectivity, and that joey's netboot is so easy!

kelly,

exactly the same thing happened to me on the samba team as you are describing: namely that the justifications for not proceeding were totally pie-in-the-sky. and often, in my case, the ideas that i was suggesting had good examples / successful uses in other projects. so it wasn't even my idea, it was successfully deployed elsewhere, yet was still being rubbished! amazing!

and it's very simple: the ego controls, the ego plays. nowhere is there a desire to see a goal reached - or more specifically, the goal is "the ego".

it's amazing, though.

someone mentioned, at the debian "lightning" talks, the link between several conspiracy theories, in which of course it was raised that there would be people placed in free software projects to disrupt them.

the hilarious thing is that in many free software projects, it's not even necessary for an outside party to control and destroy the project.

in fact, quite the opposite: the CIA and big corporations who feel threatened by free software etc. are, in my imagination, looking on in total shock and admiration, taking copious notes, and learning from us on how to disrupt and destroy projects!

13 Jul 2007 (updated 13 Jul 2007 at 17:27 UTC) »

well! and now for something completely different: i'm in a poetry / music / art expo, called De Renaissance En Nu here in den haag, and it's the first real public performance at which my work will be performed and shown.

and now for something completely different...

5 Jul 2007 (updated 5 Jul 2007 at 11:51 UTC) »
NAN akamai hits/sec

wow, that's impressive! total number of hits/sec: infinite!!

and... um... _where_ is the traffic that goes from bangalore to taipei um... why is that not listed as an example on network performance comparison?

specialistinsem - spaaaaaamm...

4 Jul 2007 (updated 4 Jul 2007 at 11:22 UTC) »

i have a silly situation - which i am going to state here, for others to deal with, and then i am going forget about it, leaving it in other people's hands to take care of.

it's this:

first interaction with you, mako, leaves me - i have to be honest, a little concerned. as the comment that you made is a matter of permanent public record, so its discussion has, in my book, to be made public and a permanent record.

i am interested in the present, and the future - not the past. that's where we're going: forwards.

whatever prompted you to make a simple blanket one-line statement, from your new position of absolute implicit responsibility, please look very very carefully at it, because your statement, unless backed up (which i genuinely hope that you will do), otherwise reflects very badly on you, on us, on advogato, on the _future_.

2 Jul 2007 (updated 2 Jul 2007 at 12:48 UTC) »

raph,

"the industry" has got to WANT to do something positive.

google is simply the channel through which it may be brought to people's attention that "the industry" is crying out in desperate "need" for "money" and doesn't know of a better way to get it.

again - we come back to the simple, simple fact and i mean fact that corporations with articles of convention stating that "maximise profits over and above all else is the goal" is completely and pathologically insane.

it's as simple as that, and it's *got* to change to something more positive and less cancerous.

otherwise, america - and other first world countries who think that "absolute maximisation of profits" is "normal" is going to remain psychologically ill on a *massive* scale beyond most people's comprehension.

oh - and take the rest of the planet with them.

what is believed is that "everyone" *has* to accept "the norm" (absolute maximisation of profits) because everyone else does. it's "the norm". "that's the way that corporations are. duh. what bullshit are you trying to tell us?? doesn't *every* corporation in the world 'maximise profits'???"

in other words, the entire world is in a pathological state - and a very destructive one at that: hence i refer to this as a "cancer", and to Corporations as "Cancerations". and it's not without good reason!

so, we have a pathological lock-in ("the norm") and the only way to break pathological states is to change something inside; to accept outside influence that is "beyond the experience of those inside".

in other words, only a NEW idea has the potential solve the problem.

so - here's some new ideas:

* contact your politicians and ask them to enact a law which outlaws "absolute maximisation of profits" in articles of incorporation of companies. starting with new companies, and setting a date whereby existing companies must and i mean MUST change their articles of incorporation to one of prioritising "maximising of efficiency first, followed by maximising of profits second". failure to enact the changes will result in automatic winding-up [sale of all assets] of the company.

* if you start a company, make sure that it doesn't put you into a position where you have to encourage this pathology. remember: you HAVE to enact the articles of incorporation, as a director. therefore, don't put yourself into a position of having to enact such a terrible thing "by proxy". just... *don't*! it's *not* okay to "excuse" such action "by proxy" - even if everyone else does it. the cycle *has* to be broken somewhere, and it might as well start with you, even if politicians won't act.

* don't buy products or services from companies whose articles of incorporation state that "absolute maximisation of profits" is the be-all and end-all. double-check even that the local grocery store you buy from - *especially* if they're a health-food shop or other organic store, or a coffee shop with an environmental policy - has decent articles of incorporation.

* especially if a store or a shop has an environmentally friendly slant or policy, *contact* them and ask about their articles of incorporation, and *especially* if you have shares in that company, point out to them that their having an environmentally-friendly policy and having "absolute maximisation of profits" as the be-all and end-all are actually in conflict, because to be environmentally-friendly costs money!

and, by pursuing an environmentally-friendly policy, you, as a shareholder, can sue that company for NOT taking every opportunity to maximise profits! therefore, they MUST change the articles of incorporation - or not state that they are an environmentally-friendly company, because the two are unsustainably incompatible.

you get the picture.

so - google is useful in that it has highlighted the problem, in a very very important area: health. however, it's not the _cause_ of the problem: the desire of corporations to absolutely maximise profits over-and-above-all-else is the cause of the problem, and, in the area of healthcare, that happens to be causing people to not *get* the best available affordable healthcare.

perhaps finally now people (especially americans) will start to get it, when they are being punished by being kept *physically* sick for being basically, on a massive scale, too greedy for money!


along the same lines think do we,
regarding the trust-metric symmetry.
a few less roots the trust does break,
it falls to us a good community to make.

well... :)

this is all very interesting.

i'm absolutely delighted to be at debconf7.

the 15 computers i lent turned out to be really necessary / useful: they got used for doing the video recording, and several people whose laptops broke were also pretty happy.

i met kai hendry, who did webconverger which, on a koolu box and using google apps would make it pretty much irrelevant for most people to have anything else - assuming you have an internet connection of course.

when 3G gets cheaper than broadband which won't be long then things start getting *really* interesting, there...

i'm writing an article called Pandora's Technology Box and i did a lot of research whilst i was here, talking to people about it, all of whom were extremely helpful and gave me some really useful insights, so i will be doing my best to rewrite the article before publication.

i happened to accidentally be in several talks: one of them was the social research talk. one thing that has me greatly concerned is the amount of pointless fighting that is keeping people from their goals.

the people i talked with came up with several ideas. one of them is to have an optional spam-filter which people can report "saints" and "arseholes" email messages to. the spam-filter can then be applied optionally to.

it won't be personal. but, if a particular email address keeps cropping up then of course that text would *happen* to end up with a rather high spam score (positive or negative). the nice thing is that knowing that, it will discourage people from getting contaminated by flame-wars: they won't even post to them because their words could end up being tagged as well!

various discussions went on about how to avoid the system being abused.

what else... i'm sure there *was* something else... oh yes: the kilts are absolutely fantastic. as was the ceilidh. and the trip to the little island, where i cycled with a really nice random person for 40km and got to see some seals (from a long way away) and had lunch overlooking the sea.

also: i haven't described what i've been up to for the past four months, but my weight is fluctuating wildly at the moment, because i'm still getting used to things being so completely different. i don't need half the food i used to eat, but i'm still not used to that, and so end up doing things like going from 73 to 75 kg in two days.

finally: the saunas were great. so many people there promised themselves that they'd get one :)

let's try that diary entry one more time...

the diary syndication thing is going a bit odd...

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