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After a very interesting discussion with Glyn Wintle at the London launch party of Ubuntu’s Intrepid Ibex, I decided to become a supporter* of the Open Rights Group (*the Group invites you to become a “supporter” rather than a “member”). I think it’s fair to say that the ORG is more or less the British equivalent of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and I believe that it has quite close, if informal, links with the US-based organization. (For the record, I’m also a member of the EFF).

If you have any interest in an Internet free of overbearing government control and censorship, and if you have any interest in the freedom of individuals to collaborate in order to write their own software and to share that software, then I urge you to support the group.

It is not indulging in conspiracy theorizing to claim that our government is manoeuvring to reduce the freedom of The Network. “Conspiracy”, of course, suggests that ominous plans are being made behind closed doors, whereas many of the plans for increasing state control of the Internet are being made and implemented quite openly. Not convinced? I invite you to peruse my informal collection of delicious.com bookmarks, tagged Internet, surveillance and privacy, just to get you in the mood.

C’mon folks, unless you want to see the Internet (in the UK at least) turned into an extension of the BBC, and all digital content (probably including that on your hard-drive) vetted by the the likes of the Hollywood studios, music copyright holders, and proprietary software vendors, then throw some support in the direction of the Open Rights Group. They’re a highly motivated and astute group of people, and all computer users in the UK are benefitting from the work they are doing. I believe that without the lobbying work of groups like the ORG, we won’t have computers as we understand them for much longer. They’ll be outlawed and replaced by government-supplied devices, or more likely perhaps, by locked-down, DRM-laced equivalents from “authorized” computer providers.

Of course, I’m stating my “cynical and corrosive” opinions on these matters while I’m still permitted, for we know that certain members of the government take a dim view of people expressing their opinions and thoughts on the Web (espeically when they run counter to the opinions of the current government).

EDIT: The full O’Reilly podcast interview with Glyn Wintle can be accessed here.

• He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics
• He can speak Spanish
• His favourite book is Moby-Dick
• He uses an Apple Mac laptop
• He has read every Harry Potter book
• He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg, a Kenyan symbol of the fragility of life

More here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/barackobama/3401168/Barack-Obama-The-50-facts-you-might-not-know.html

So, it turned out that the majority of Americans didn’t believe that Barack Obama was an elitist, socialist, terrorist Arab who was too thin, too educated and too black to be President.

Whatever Obama achieves in the next four years, in my mind he’s already notched up one very significant accomplishment, or at least will have done so come 20th January. The very fact of his election has rescued the institution of the Presidency of the United States of America from the cynical, ignominious depths to which it has sunk over the last two terms of office, and that’s not a bad start

Ophelia Benson writes:

So. A child of 13 and her father try to tell the authorities that she was raped by three men, and the authorities in response arrest her, order up a truckload of stones, bury her in the ground up to her neck, gather a crowd of a thousand people, and throw the truckload of stones at her head.

It’s hard to figure out what’s going on in the heads of people like that. It’s not just violent lashing out - it’s religious legal official punishment - carried out in cold blood and the pure odor of sanctity. It’s hard to figure that out. What kind of monster do they think they worship, that wants children smashed to death with rocks for being raped? What kind of hideous loathsome savage bloodthirsty tyrannical cruel monster do they imagine wants them to act like that? What kind of nightmare world do they live in? How do they look on their work and approve it?

A breath from the pit

To anyone who might be thinking that incredible thought “But who are we to judge others’ culture?”, I suggest you put the question to the 13 year old victim. Let’s ask her whether or not she thinks others have the right and/or duty to question the practice. Oh hang on, we can’t. She’s been brutally murdered.

Dear Prime Minister,

Thank you for taking time out from saving our nation from the worst recession in living memory in order to complain about prank telephone calls.

Yours sincerely

From the ubuntu.com wiki: Intrepid Ibex release parties

Waxy O’Connors, just off Leicester Square - 14-16 Rupert Street, London, W1D 6DD. Map

We have the Dargle Bar booked. It’s located on the lower level and looks out onto the Tree Room. We will have our own private bar and you can also order food here. Nearest tubes to Waxy’s are Leicester Sq or Piccadilly

Spread the word!

So, the Republicans have begun what a Guardian writer referred to the other day as the “circular firing squad”. The cover-your-arse, public blame game that inevitably starts when a campaign starts heading south (or North-West, in the case of Palin’s own personal campaign). An article on CNN yesterday stated:

‘But two sources, one Palin associate and one McCain adviser, defended the decision to keep her press interaction limited after she was picked, both saying flatly that she was not ready and that the missteps could have been a lot worse.

They insisted that she needed time to be briefed on national and international issues and on McCain’s record.

“Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic,” said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was probably the “hardest” to get her “up to speed than any candidate in history.”‘

Palin’s ‘going rogue,’ McCain aide says

Amazing, isn’t it? Despite her obvious, unprecedented and now admitted to shortcomings, they’ve been quite prepared to install her as VP to somone who has, by all accounts, a one-in-three chance of dying during his term in office. That would surely be the political equivalent of allowing a young child to drive a JCB — and no less irresponsible?

UPDATE: It’s all becoing rather nasty now http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=CtxDs3Rk_vE

I’ve realised that when viewed with Internet Exploder 6, my side-bar, which is supposed to be floating at the top of its containing element and to the right of this “column”, has in fact sunk to the ocean floor since I added the Ubuntu 8.10 badge.

If this website was a commercial affair I would scramble to fix it, but given that it isn’t and given that eveything displays fine in recent versions of Firefox, Opera and in IE7, I’m not going to spend any time hacking around in my WordPress stylesheet. If you’re viewing from a locked-down, “frozen in time” corporate Windows machine, then apologies. If you’re a home user using IE6 then I respectfully suggest that you have more pressing computing issues than the location of this blog’s side-bar