Category Archives: Uncategorized

OK now, is it Mobile Linux or Embedded Linux?

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There are two categories on Wikipedia: Embedded Linux (with its own article) and Mobile Linux (without its own article, don’t know if it’ll be redundant to create one).

I’m confused about this because Mobile Linux (which is meant to go onto “mobile”, “traveling” devices such as smartphones, PDAs/”palmtops” and PMPs) is generally assumed as being a specific form of Embedded Linux (which goes on both mobile and stationary devices, such as networking hubs, robots and non-GUI machinery).

However, you also have the “Netbook“, “MID” and “tablet PC” Linux distributions that are coming out. These are meant to be “mobile”, in both the laptop sense and the phone sense, since you can carry such smaller “-tops” in a small bag, a purse, or other place where you can often find a mobile phone located (except for the pocket….apparently, they won’t get to that point until multitouch “-tops” will replace the “-book”‘s keyboard, and that will take years to put out to market).

Furthermore, while this smaller type of “-top” may (like the MacBook Air) or may not lack an optical drive, it will also have a way to install an operating system from some physical device, whether it is through a wireless optical drive that syncs to the “-top” or through a USB flash drive stick that can be stuck into a port on the side of the “-top”. Mobile Linux devices – at least the smartphones – don’t have this option, as don’t other smartphones with different operating systems installed, although Linux has been installed (through various jerry-rigged ways, onto PMPs and PDAs which aren’t locked into a carrier).

So where does the mobile Embedded with no user-software flexibility end and the mobile Netbook/MID with user-installable OS and software begin?

If the smaller luggable laptops are becoming as small and compact as the Mobile Embedded devices, then should the Netbooks and their operating systems be included into the “Mobile Linux” Category, alongside the smartphones, PDAs and PMPs?

(I also notice that with the current hoopla being given to Linux-based smartphones and Linux-based subnotebooks, one doesn’t hear that much about Linux PDAs or Linux PMPs, although that may only be because of the respective lack of native Linux support for PDA-compatible wireless and PMP-compatible codecs that won’t wear down batteries. Oh well.)

On MEND, the spoiling of economic blood and a one-of-a-kind relationship with the media

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MEND is a militant group based and operating primarily in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region. It most recently declared a ceasefire in its ongoing battle against the Nigerian government that begins on Tuesday at midnight GMT.

It is most well known for its acts of militant sabotage against the petroleum industry (due primarily to the federal government’s past and present outrages in the region and the petroleum industry’s providing of the Nigerian feds with the cash to do such outrages), as well as its regularly-updated cache of expatriate employee hostages who are all scared shitless before being let go unharmed.

But what makes MEND particularly interesting among other current militant rebel groups in the Third World is the organization’s relationship with the media. Every time that it executes an attack on an oil pipeline, MEND makes sure to send a pseudonymous email to Reuters to tell of their intent.

Probably the most famous example of MEND’s relationship with the media is the 2006 excursion of CNN’s (former) correspondent Jeff Koinange to the hideout of MEND in the Delta:

This report put both Koinange and CNN in hot water with the feds (namely the government information minister, Frank Nweke, Jr.), who claimed that the report was staged. No doubt that Manila was a bit pissed by this display of Filipino hostages as well.

Also, MEND is known for never showing their faces on camera and always brandishing a weapon of some sort, and, as you probably saw in the video, either dancing (with guns) or riding shotgun on speedboats (with guns).

For the record, I laughed at the video when I saw it just now (it seemed a bit more serious back when I first saw it).

But it is funny, how an anti-government, anti-industrial rebel group has this much access to Western media outlets without ever taking off their masks and keeping a corrupt government and its even more corrupt military on its toes.

The theme or motive of MEND’s fight against the petroleum industry also comes at a time that the Western media has turned into a battleground between pro- and anti-petroleum constituents and PR agencies due to the global warming meme. In fact, it couldn’t have come at a better time to advance an anti-fossil fuel agenda both in the Third World and the First.

I don’t sympathize with MEND’s usage of violence and hostage-taking issues, by the way; neither do I sympathize with the Nigerian government or petroleum industry. It just seems a bit….weird.

Well shit…. (also, the military and authoritarianism in Africa)

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The presidential runoff on Friday is… off.

At least the MDC has the majority in parliament to use against Mugabe and ZANU-PF, legally making him a lame duck. But still…not even a Kenyan-style GNU to make dictatorship life a bit harder for Mugabe.

Meanwhile, African nationalism is a wonderful thing.

So does this mean that Mugabe gets to rule for another decade and keep Zimbabwe in a seemingly-perpetual struggle against perceived British colonialism until the Dear Leader dies?

Maybe its clear that there are quite a few Zimbabweans who are content with an economically-interdependent, multiracial nation-state and do not prefer a military solution to economic or political problems?

I personally object to any use of militant means to gain or maintain power. The post about how the AU should pull either an Anjouan or Togo on Zimbabwe in the case of Tsvangirai winning the run-off without Mugabe budging from his presidential residence, and is not in favor of a military solution to the turmoil caused primarily by Mugabe’s military and ZANU-PF militia.

I’ve objected against the militant rebel coup against Aristide in 2004 (I didn’t say anything about Aristide’s militant usage of police against militant opposition and those civilians who happened to sympathize with such militancy), I’ve objected to the use of the U.S. military in the overthrow of the Hawaiian government and maintenance of the same rule in the archipelago to this day (although it took place in 1893), and I object to the usage of the military and militant, violent means by the Mugabe government to maintain his rule in the country. I’ve never seriously countenanced the post-9/11 wars of the U.S., and I objected to how the military was being used to settle an old score between the U.S. and some country in the other large supercontinent of the world that most folks on this continent can’t find on a map.

I’m fairly anti-military in my stance, at least because I view the military (particularly the political use of violent tactics) as a sign that the entity which uses such means is only losing the argument, or losing control of the argument. Furthermore, if an entity which uses the military or militant institutions (insurrectionist or state-sanctioned) to gain control of the relevant institutions does gain control of such institutions (this includes the ZANU-PF, Afewerki’s ascension to power in Eritrea post-independence, the military juntas of Latin America and Caribbean during the Cold War, or even the Communist guerrilas who gained power in Eastern Europe and formed more than a few satellites around the Soviet Union), it only gives the new ex-rebel governors of the nation-state an incentive to use force against those who are less militarily-abled in order to make short order of an argument or conflict between the entities represented by or sponsoring of the rival militancies (or between the ruling militancy and a significant non-militant institution).

Finally, the people suffer in some fashion. Economies go down the toilet, social services decline in quality, civil freedoms are violated, people die, precedents for authoritarianism are ensured for the foreseeable future, rinse and repeat.

It doesn’t matter who or which institution engages in militancy first: things just happen to go wrong for the future generations.

Of course, I can be a bit of a hypocrite to have such a stance when I’m only a few stone’s throws away from one of the larger Air Force bases in the state of Georgia; also, I AM a bit of a hypocrite since I’m still a beneficiary from my father’s 23-year military service (and I have TRICARE, a military health insurance service, when most people in the U.S. can’t afford the decent health care that I and my mother, among others in my immiediate family, can take for granted for as long as we have periodically-updated military IDs for base and AMWR access).

But I don’t intend to serve in the military.

I’ve never been good with authority figures getting in my face to make a point “crystal-clear” to me. Nor do I feel comfortable with the idea of going to a country where others who dwell by the gun in the same way that any military does desire to direct their guns to my head or other body part.

Nor do I feel like returning the favor to others who are percieved as “our” enemies.

Will the AU pull an Anjouan or a Togo on Zimbabwe?

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In May this year, the African Union sent an invasion force to the island of Anjouan (part of the Comoros federation), which was ruled at the time by a regional president who had won a rigged election and, in the eyes of the Comorosians, overstayed his time as president of the island. So the Comoros requested the African Union to send a multinational force to overthrow the regional president and arrest him. It was a spectacular invasion where no one died, and the rebel president had fled to French territory nearby to avoid arrest and transport to the Comoros (he was arrested by the French, though).

In 2005, the long-time dictator of Togo, Gnassingbe Eyadema, died at a ripe old age; however, despite constitutional mandates for the President of the National Assembly to succeed the president of the nation on the latter’s death or resignation until elections were held, Eyadema’s son, Faure Gnassingbe, was given the post by the military, which also amended the constitution to legalize the move. The response was angry and swift: violent street protests against Faure’s usurping of the presidency broke out, and the African Union reacted by temporarily ostracizing the Faure government (sanctions, diplomatic withdrawal, etc.) until Faure was replaced by the National Assembly President before post-mortem elections. Faure stepped down temporarily, then won the election and resumed his rule with lots of electoral fraud.

So if the African Union has such a heart or conscious for electorally-backed (albeit often fraudulent), rather than militarily-backed, rulers and governances, then how will the African Union react if Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe loses the June 27 election to Morgan Tsvangirai but stays true to his (and his wife’s…and his general’s) word to never leave the presidential palace without bloodshed?

Will the African Union react with sanctions? Will the African Union treat any of Mugabe’s post-defeat belligerent antics as a military coup? Or will it (OMG) send its own multinational force into the country if Mugabe entrenches himself into the presidential residence in preparation for a last-ditch Chimurenga?

Plus, if Tsvangirai and the MDC do win the electoral mandate after all, if this drama does eventually end, how will the MDC deal with the Zimbabwean military, or with the military’s currently-dominating influence on the government (as exemplified by the Joint Operations Command)? Does the MDC plan to go for a new constitutional platform that strips the military of quite a bit of its power?

I suppose that Tsvangirai, after seeing how Mugabe had abolished the office of prime minister in the 1987 constitutional amendments and had made the president’s office both head of state and head of government, would do best to not just reverse Mugabe’s actions but also permanently wed the President’s mandate to the majority in the Parliament.

This would be the same or similar situation as to the current form of government in South Africa, Guyana, Switzerland, and Botswana.

Why a parliament-dependent executive, though?

I think that such a form of government makes the head of both state and government accountable (and maybe force some loyalty) to the largest party in parliament, of which he will most likely be a member or a head. In this atmosphere, the military is only an apparatus that is called to action by the president on very rare occasions.

A few disadvantages may exist for such a system (single-party-dominant, intra-party rivalries may become more important than inter-party contests), but it may, overall, benefit the MDC as a party if it manages to gain more of a majority in the Parliament in the next parliamentary election.

Will it benefit the people of Zimbabwe? It may get the military out of their hair and may even lead to a reverse exodus of the emigrants back from South Africa and Botswana, but will it result in the improvement of social services and revitalization of the economy from the stagnation caused by crappy economic policies of the Mugabe regime, coupled by international sanctions?

That has yet to be addressed. Hopefully, the MDC won’t be influenced by the ANC’s issues with handling the economy and social services at a municipal level.

AIM Groups: We came out here just to die.

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I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time to move alot of their older-branded goods to newer-branded bags, but apparently it wasn’t winning any more eyes for the banner ads.

AIM Groups was announced in November 2007 as a rebranding of AOL Groups, an e-groups service set up a few years ago to compete with Yahoo, MSN and Google Groups, it was part of AOL’s Microsoft-like blitz to rebrand everything under a better-known brand name, which also included AIM Profiles for those who wanted to use the famous instant messenger for surfing “personals”.

Then in June 2008, AIM Groups was announced as a pack of dead weight to be dropped off by July 10. As usual, the users who used AOL Groups as an alternative to the other, older services cried to the AIM Groups employees on the “People Connection” employee blog posting (which had also played party to two posting by employees in the AIM Groups department who were on their way out of the company) to spin it off or otherwise save the venture, but to no apparent or obvious avail.

Yep, yet another AOL failure. A tremendous failure.

Surprise: there wasn’t even a Wikipedia article on AOL or AIM Groups during the short existence of either entity at the time of the announcement.

Thursday’s graduation

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Pictures here. Degree comes in the mail next week, maybe.

Also, I was asked for my name by a pro photographer while I was sitting in the front row at the ceremony. Since I didn’t see any pictures at the Telegraph website, I guess he was doing it for the Houston Home Journal (the only other newspaper in the area).

And I think I’m switching my courses up: I’ll probably do English as a major with Programming as a minor.

Anyway, I’m bored.

My current projects:

  • Compiling a Wikipedia-friendly list of all candidates, winning or losing, in the Zimbabwean parliamentary election from a few months ago.
  • Fooling with Ubuntu Hardy via Wubi. The Compiz Fusion installation, however, leaves a bit to be desired (I’m totally f’ing lost on how to get the effects that have been touted so much on YouTube working in Ubuntu, although the most basic effects work as much as the scroll on the touchpad will allow), and the fonts suck as usual (yes, I know the reasons, just sayin’). I can at least say that this is the first time that I can work with Ubuntu without it becoming a stumble.
  • Thinking. Reeeal hard.

So that’s it.

Balloons redux #1

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In response to the anonymous comments for this earlier post, I looked on this Yahoo Answers post just now and came across this term that was mentioned near the end of the replies to the post: pteromerhanoglobophobia (literally, “fear of flying balloons”, although I don’t know if that can refer to being scared for a balloon floating away from earth or actually riding a balloon away from the ground, which would be more akin to acrophobia).

Don’t bother looking on Google for it, because it will only show the Yahoo Answers post and my own post. So I don’t think that anyone has actually taken a look at this particular phobia; maybe its a rare chronic fear that isn’t as predominate as, say, claustrophobia or Triskaidekaphobia.

The flow and the preservation

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A new discussion on Ars Technica about deregulation of the telecommunications industry.

OK, so those who desire network neutrality and the breaking up of regional telco monopolies through regulation are butting heads with those who loathe any government intervention into business affairs…again.

But then, taking into account the positions of any institution or institutional form in comparison to the next one, I wonder just how far “deregulation” should go to ensure the flourishing of stuff like free speech and free expression for media.

I tend to think that business corporations tend to take the flow and preservation of profit much more seriously than the flow and preservation of information, and they often turn inward to majority political, governmental institutions for the furtherance of laws and regulations that restrict the flow and preservation of information (anti-piracy, anti-spam, anti-IP-violation, anti-hacking etc.).

So they (in the public eye) don’t make for the best stewards of a freer internet. But should that automatically translate as “the government is the best preserver of a free, non-tiered internet”?

I doubt it, emphatically. I don’t think that the government is interested in the flow and preservation of information or the flow and preservation of profit as much as it is interested in the flow and preservation of defense, intelligence and public services. Profit and information are often the free radicals that governments want to harness or gain with a firm grip (ranging from motives for the “public good” to motives for the “crushing of traitorous anarchist elements”), whether it is through state-owned enterprises or state-owned broadcasting services.

Furthermore, governments may turn inward to majority religious, dogmatic or moralistic institutions for the furtherance of laws and regulations that restrict the flow and preservation of both profit and information (i.e., anti-pornography, anti-sodomy, anti-flag-burning, anti-game-violence, etc.). The religious institutions may also look to majority ethnocultural institutions for the furtherance of laws and regulations that restrict the flow and preservation of things that are beneficial to government, business and media all at once. Where does it end?

So I don’t think that governments are the best stewards for a freer internet through Net Neutrality measures. But neither are the business corporations. They both tend to look backward for the furtherance of their legitimacy, but otherwise don’t care much for their precedent institutions (secular governments, libertarian CEOs and so on).

I think the reason why the pro-media Net Neutrality fans are looking to the government to restrict the corporations from structuring the telecommunications infrastructures in a manner biased to those who have more money is because, well, the media is weak and has no teeth.

Yes. The media, like a baby, is still dependent upon the business corporation (and all types of corporate output, whether it is the computer that is used to process the information that is put into it by the user to be stored on a business-manufactured server or the advertising placements on the side and top of a web page that generate income for a website’s maintenance) for sustenance. Yet, the media’s users and drivers ultimately loathes the corporation for holding it back from access to information.

It’s alot like the situation for those who desire secular government and politics yet have to cater to majority religious sentiments to maintain the status quo, or those who desire maximum profit at the least cost to both the corporation and the customer but still have to ask the majority government or political sentiments to help maintain their own status quo.

So, in order to maintain the flow and preservation of information through the Internet and related resources, the Net Neutrality fandom wants to bypass the corporations and ask the government to take preventive action against the corporations?

What if that is self-defeating? What if the government may use Net Neutrality to stifle the flow of both profit and information for political or even moralistic purposes?

That’s what I fear. Corporations are not the best stewards of Net Neutrality, but the governments, by historical precedent, are worse at the maintenance of the flow and preservation of information.

Thus, maybe it becomes a matter of how far the media is willing to wean itself from the corporate teat.

Or, maybe it is the matter of how the media can support its own potential weight in terms of information preserved.

I’d say that the wiki offers a first look at a self-sustaining, continuously-expanding media, but its only a start. The wiki article, unlike the blog article or the newspaper article or the university thesis, doesn’t have to rely upon a catchy title or present anything “new” or “BREAKING” or otherwise edgy enough for the advertising dollars to roll in; it only needs to present relevant information on a subject, although it will need updating to be chronologically relevant (albeit in a chronological relevance that appeals to all times of existence for the subject).

But then, how is media self-sustenance and self-justification relevant to Net Neutrality?

In that Digg post about Net Neutrality in 2012, I came across several suggestions that a separate, non-profit version of the Internet should be set up in “preparation” for the oh-so-fabulous Maya doomsyear.

Still, despite my own cynicism towards the Digg post,  I did take a favorable notice of such suggestions while still rejecting the basis for the suggestions. Maybe it would be wise to work towards a distributed, non-single-sourced Internet infrastructure; the DIY information to accomplish such an endeavor will be put out there eventually.

But who would build the physical tools to apply such information into physical form and accommodate the users of that physical form? And where are we to obtain the resources that would be used to build that physical form, even if such materials are recycled from older materials? And (worse) who’s going to foot the bill?

Thus, we are back at the business corporation’s doorstep. Then how will we obtain laws that are favorable to, and not restrictive upon, the flow and preservation of information (in comparison to other countries that have less favorable laws concerning journalists and usage og the Internet)? Then we find ourselves back at the doorstep of the government, the same as the Net Neutrality proponents.

So maybe it is a matter of both the self-sustenance/propagation/justification of the media’s distribution of information and how much influence and clout that the media has in the precedent institutions such as business, government or even religion and culture.

In other words, the media needs to grow up and gain weight. It must be the 800-pound gorilla with which the business corporations and nation-state governments in any given region must reckon; it must become bigger than the multinational corporations, the supranational governments or the multicultural, multitribal religions. The media must have its own lobbies in the legislative assemblies, its own shareholders in the Boardrooms, its own preachers and priests in the pulpits, all pushing for the development of a media-friendly status-quo from the “grassroots” to the “ivory towers”.

But until that time comes, Net Neutrality remains as a double-edged sword that will hurt the media more than it will the business corporations. It is more favorable, or at least less damaging, to a robust, mature, powerful media than it is to the extremely profit-dependent media which we have at this moment.

Multi-personal multi-input computer administration

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I was just watching a Technology Review interview of Jeff Han, the “father” of the current multi-touch fad in computing (I don’t mean that in a bad way to him, its just that the guy’s video of multitouch interaction was followed within the next two years by other companies, including Apple and MS, launching their bids for multi-touch interactive devices with commercial blitzkriegs and grandiose announcements.

However, I soon had an idea on the multi-touch devices that will become much more sophisticated in the future.

If the laptops, mobile devices and desktops of the present are personal computers, then does the Microsoft Surface and other large multi-touch display devices that can handle interaction between more than one person at the same time count as a “multi-personal computer”?

The larger multi-touch devices that can handle input and output from more than one or two individuals concurrently should allow (I think) the opening of more than one instance of an installed application so that users of a large multitouch device can use the device to the fullest extent without getting in each other’s way.

I think that the administration of settings for large multitouch device users goes beyond just setting up a username and password for each user and his/her personal settings. It can also go into the graphic compartmentalization of spaces on a device allocated for each concurrent user.

I mean, if servers (which are, technically, multi-user) have to allocate logins and privileges for each user over the network, then why not the multi-personal multitouch computers?

But still, how does one administer a graphical multi-touch environment?

Union herrenvolk

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No, not a Wikipedia entry this time. Instead, this is something that I’ve noticed from supporters and hardcore members of trade/labor unions.

I’m not necessarily anti-union (workers and CEOs will always step on each other’s toes in mutual fashion), but why is it that the trade union supporters tend to voice the same reasons for the existence of unions and the need for unions in *all* business corporations?

Or rather, why is it that the trade union supporters (in all countries, I think) often use the terms “brothers”/”sisters” and “viva” as a form of exhorting exclamation, and possess a special dislike utter hate for “scabs” (or strike breakers)?

And finally, why is it that union supporters tend to voice expressions of a siege mentality against the owners and managers of corporations (who are, most likely, not that fond of unionization) and those who ally with them to push back against unionization? I mean, not as in “we must maintain the balance between the unions and the CEOs” but as “we must protect our jobs against the greedy CEOs”.

I don’t necessarily see unionization as socialism (or maybe it is, who knows), but the resulting split between the unions and the CEOs (often resulting in strikes and pickets) tends to offer a glimpse into what I call “union nationalism”.

For those who join the unions, doing such things as crossing the picket line to clock in is a definite “NO”, and those who do so are harangued to the public as “scabs” with no further delay after the strike; the reason for such is that the line-crossers are “scabbing” off of previous victories for worker’s rights by the unions and are being selfish to their co-workers. This is compounded by the fact that, in several corporations in several jurisdictions, unionization is mandated by law upon employment.

So when you have such things as the “right to work” laws to expand the number of “open shops”, the unions display fear against such laws and their supporters (Rick Berman, for one, is a perennial enemy of the unions); for the workers, the benefit of the “right to work” is no mandatory membership payments to unions, although this may (in the union’s POV) deprive the non-union workers of negotiating power for wages and benefits.

This has only served to redefine the conflict between trade unions and corporations by adding a new party – public relations firms and think tanks – to the corporations’ arsenal.

My personal opinion about this new conflict is that, because unions already have a poor reputation in the US and other countries, it doesn’t seem like the unions are winning with the current arsenal of well-used antagonistic, demagogic rhetoric to shame the corporations into fulfilling their wishes. The enlisting of PR and think-tanks by those who “want the extra penny” only further muddles matters for the unions, since this will give the corporations a stronger way to appeal to the emotions of those who dislike any socially-imposed restrictions (including libertarians and those who may be inconvenienced by strikes).

Sticking to the old union nationalism (that is, the celebration of the union and its struggles – and views both the non-unioner and the corporation owner as a worthless parasitic individual – in a similar fashion to how a nationalist celebrates the nation-state and its struggles – and denigrates the foreigner and the rich as dangers to the sovereignty, integrity and security of the nation-state) only makes things worse.