Barefoot in the wilderness
in search of understanding

I've won!

Yup, I finished. Today, I passed the magical 50 000 word mark and officially won the 2006 NaNoWriMo

pax et bonum

More on Windows Vista

The Register has another analysis of what the new Windows licence will mean to you, and whether Microsoft has overstepped the law in its zeal to protect its investment. When you install Vista, you have to activate it within 30 days. So far, so good – lots of software requires this. Where Vista departs from the norm is that, if it think that you haven’t activated it properly, it will stop working properly. All those new features you thought you were buying will stop working, and it will fall back into a non-updateable XP-lookalike mode. The important thing isn’t about whether you’ve paid for the software, nor even whether you’ve activated it. The issue is that Microsoft has taken it upon itself to stop your PC working based only on whether it thinks that you’ve activated Vista. Unlike normal due process (in which you are innocent until proven guilty), Microsoft will now impose its penalties based on suspicion alone.

If for some reason the software “phones home” back to Redmond, Washington, and gets or gives the wrong answer – irrespective of the reason – it will automatically disable itself. That’s like saying definitively, “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that…”
Unless you can prove to the satisfaction of some automoton that the software is “genuine”, or more accurately, that under the relevant copyright laws that you have satisfied the requirements of the copyright laws and all of the terms of the End User License Agreement, the software will, on its own, go into a “protect Microsoft” mode…
What if you assert that you did activate the product, but Microsoft claims you did not? What if you attempt to activate the product, but Microsoft’s servers are down, or they provide improper information, or their servers are hacked and give you bad activation information?
What the contract states is that unless you can activate the product (irrespective of whose fault it is that you cannot activate), you forfeit your right to use the product, and therefore access to any of the information on any computers using the product.

pax et bonum

Child surveillance

There’s a new report out from the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR) discussing government policies about retaining and collating data about children. Entitled Children’s Databases: Safety and Privacy, the report was commissions by the UK Government’s Information Commissioner’s Office. They are concerned that efforts to protect children by building large databases of information could backfire and actually divert resources away from front-line services that directly protect endangered children, and also sideline parents by removing responsibility from local teachers, doctors and social workers to a centralised system.

(click for more)

NaNoWriMo progress

I mentioned a while ago that I was planning to participate once more in the great insanity that is National Novel Writing Month. Since then, I’ve not said anything, which might be a disappointment to some of you. Well, perhaps! To remedy this situation, herewith an update, now that we’re three-quarters of the way through: I’ve already written more than twice as many words as I managed last year, and am well on my way to winning! My progress bar currently reads as follows: . Progress hasn’t been smooth, but it’s been more or less steady – my profile shows the following curve: .

For those who can’t remember what NaNoWriMo is – it’s a month of insanity when tens of thousands of people around the world attempt to write a 50,000 word work of fiction in 30 days. The motto is, “quantity not quality” and, true to that motto, large portions of my NaNovel stink pretty well. But there’s still a sense of achievement to having got this far. This year, I’m going to win

pax et bonum

Stum

I subscribe to the OED’s Word of the Day RSS feed, and today it turned up the first word I’d never heard of: stum. Apparently, stum is unfermented or partially fermented grape juice (or must), especially juice in which the fermentation has been stopped by adding sulphur! See what marvels the Internet holds

pax et bonum

Not coming Zune

This is hilarious. Microsoft have launched their own music player in an attempt to take on the mighty iPod. Their beast is called “Zune” and comes in black, white and a very nice brown (!), and its big “selling point” is that it lets you share songs with up to three friends who also have Zunes, wirelessly. However, it will only play music downloaded from Microsoft’s new Marketplace music service (not even MS’s old music store’s tunes will play on it) – so much for their “Plays for Sure” initiative!

Best of all, though, the Zune won’t work with MS’s imminent new operating system, Vista. Quoth The Register.

Zune, the new digital music player from Microsoft, is not compatible with the software giant’s new Vista operating system.
Buried in the Zune website, Microsoft admits that the player is not compatible with Vista and gives no information as to when it will introduce a patch or update enabling the player to do so.

Priceless

pax et bonum

Lib Dems seek mass repeal of laws

The Liberal Democrats have called for a mass repeal of 10 parliamentary acts passed by Labour since 1997.
A “freedom bill” sets out plans to abolish ID cards, control orders for terror suspects and to end extradition to the US “without proper evidence”.
The Lib Dems also pledge to end the storage of DNA details of people never charged or convicted of crimes…
[The Bill] would include abolishing restrictions on protests in Parliament Square and removing police powers to impose conditions on public assemblies.
Also proposed is repealing the home secretary’s right to criminalise trespass in designated areas.
The Lib Dems want to abolish laws that remove the “public interest defence” for whistleblowers – employees who report misconduct – and to ban the use of “hearsay evidence” in court.

Score another big plus point for the Lib Dems. As their party leader said in the accouncement: “Parliament needs to show that it is as serious about repealing legislation as it is about passing it.“

(From BBC News)

pax et bonum

Piracy losses fabricated

A draft Australian study is reported to show that the huge losses to piracy claimed by the music and software giants are spurious.

According to a draft report by the Australian Institute of Criminology, the music industry can’t explain how it arrives at its statistics for staggering losses through piracy. The Business Software Association’s claim of $361m per year in lost sales is “unverified and epistemologically unreliable”, the report says.

In other words, these statistics are made up. It has always seemed wrong to me that, for example, the software giants estimate their losses by simply multiplying the number of pirate copies they believe to exist by the shelf price – as though everyone who had a pirate copy would have bought one if only they hadn’t been so naughty. What studies there are suggest that the proportion of people running pirated software who would actually have bought the commercial product is small, well under 10% if memory serves.

pax et bonum

Keeping things private

After talking yesterday about how the UK is becoming a surveillance society, it was interesting to read today of a meeting between the Information Commissioners of the UK, Germany, France and New Zealand to put common principles in place to protect our privacy. All the more so given that Germany scored highest in the survey I linked to yesterday.

“The protection of citizens’ personal data is vital for any society, on the same level as freedom of the press or freedom of movement,” said the communiqué adopted by commissioners. “As our societies are increasingly dependent on the use of information technologies, and personal data is collected or generated at a growing scale, it has become more essential than ever that individual liberties and other legitimate interests of citizens are adequately respected.”...
Last week [the UK Information Commissioner, Richard] Thomas warned that the UK had become a surveillance society, and that the constant monitoring of individuals’ actions by public and private bodies was creating social division. A report produced for the commissioner’s office said that in the future wealthy people would be made more mobile by surveillance, while poorer people would find it harder to be physically and economically mobile because of social profiling based on data gathering.

(Thanks to The Register for the tip.)

pax et bonum

UK an "endemic surveillance society"

Privacy International have produced a report looking at the state of various countries round the world from a provacy perspective. As might be expected, Russia and China don't do well. But what might be a surprise is that the UK is placed in the same class as they are! Using measures such as Consitutional protections, Statutory protections, Data sharing and Communications interception, the UK comes out as among the worst countries in the world for privacy. It's significantly worse than every other country in Europe (there's an entire empty category separating them). The US does little better, coming in the next section: "extensive surveillance society". Time to move to Canada, perhaps - one of the very few countries to come out in the top category.

pax et bonum

Come off it!

Tomorrow (4th November) is time for us all to come off it – to turn off appliances and install energy-efficient lightbulbs, to show that we can reduce the amount of power that we need and so reduce the carbon dioxide burden we carry. And there’s even a selfish part – we get to save money in the process! So come on, come off it!

pax et bonum

MS climbs down over Vista licensing

Sounds like Microsoft are changing their mind over the restrictive terms they were going to impose on Vista – The Register reports that the “one transfer only” limit is to be removed, so you’ll be able to buy new computers and install Vista on them as before. I still wouldn’t buy Vista if I was you, though…

pax et bonum

Surveillance society

What price security? For years now, we’ve been bombarded with the message that security will require us to give up freedoms that have been cherished for decades and even centuries. The UK Government is now even proposing to redraft the social contract – instead of the traditional virtues of liberty, transparency and trust, we are being told that the “new world” of the 20th century requires instead “liberty, tolerance and guarded openness”. But can liberty really survive when the Government is only “guardedly open” about what it’s doing and why?

Worse even than that, a new report says that Britain is fast becoming a surveillance state, with CCTV cameras, personal profiles built up by business and councils, records of travel and spending, all being kep and cross-referenced. These data are valuable to businesses and Government, but they’re valuable to us, too – these are our personal data, after all. And if Governments and businesses decide to treat us differently based on this information, should there not be some control over what they know, and who they can tell?

The surveillance state is sorting society into pockets of desirable and undesirable people and treating them accordingly, a major survey by the UK’s privacy guardian, the Information Commissioner said today…
no-one quite knows where it is all headed, because technology is moving faster than ever, faster than civil society has the means to absorb it, understand its implications, and humanize it.

(From The Register)

pax et bonum

State of Denial

Howard at Gathering grace looks back on what he thought at the beginning of this Iraq war, and why. And looks at how things panned out, and why.

I think I was not directly convinced of the “Just War” approach…However I did feel that an invasion could remove a pernicious and evil dictator who had mercilessly used WMDs on Kurds. I think, therefore, in balance the WMD issue (and Saddam’s willingness to use them) just about swung it for me.
How wrong I was!

pax et bonum

Remembrance

Today was Remembrance Sunday in the UK – the day when we remember those who have died in wars. However, there’s a big question over what we should remember and why. Ekklesia has been suggesting that Christian churches should encourage their members to wear the white poppy rather than the red one – to remember all those who died in wars, not just “our soldiers”, and to support non-violent resolution of problems. This has proved somewhat controversial. (For foreigners: it is customary in the UK to wear a red poppy to commemorate the fallen, after the fields of the First World War sprouted poppies once the fighting was over. The sale of these poppies raises money for the British Legion, which takes care of old soldiers.)

We recall the military downfall of Hitler, for example, but not the aftermath of the extravagently wasteful war that helped bring him to power. According to John Gaunt of TalkSport Radio, I am ‘despicable’ for even mentioning this complexity – just as President Bush has recently called those who question the impact of American military adventurism ‘enemy comforters’. These are political attempts to repress different memories. The awkward truth is that it is always might, and not always right (when those two things can be clearly distinguished), that wins wars.
Presiding clergy and other secular officiants often wrestle hard with these matters around Armistice Day. But they know that sensitivities around the defence of an ingrained ‘natural’ patriotic and military outlook are so high that there will be hell to pay for even the least sign of dissent.
Mention the fact that Britain has armed all its own most recent enemies (notably Argentina before the Falklands and Iraq under Saddam) and there will be discomfort if not outrage. Suggest that an altar is not the place for national flags and military symbols, because it is a symbol of reconciliation for all, and you will be accused of being ‘a troublesome vicar’ (as a friend of mine was no so long ago).
Another friend who is a German minister in Britain was even required to bless military colours, though in her own country (given the terrible experience of ‘church and nation’ being identified so disastrously under Nazism) this is little short of blasphemy (From Ekklesia.)

Fortunately, this message is getting out and spreading. Even at the official ceremony at the Cenotaph today, in London, members of military families who have lost loved ones in the war in Iraq laid wreaths of both red and white poppies..

pax et bonum

Reactions

Ekklesia has a comment article discussing the recent furore about the fall of Ted Haggard from his position as leader of the million-strong US National Association of Evangelicals. The furore came, of course, because he finally had to admit that the allegations were true – he had had sex with another man.

Looking in from the outside, it is hard to understand why sexuality has become the defining issue for ‘fidelity to the truth’ in some sections of the church. Perhaps it is because it exposes us to the most joyful and grievous part of our identity.
For many Christians, it seems, amassing wealth at the expense of others or sanctioning war are no bars to recognition within the church – but forming a loving and committed relationship with someone of the same gender is.

pax et bonum