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Dr Richard Stallman — For a Free Digital Society

Aug 27th, 2011
by Rich.
2 comments

You know what they say about coming face to face with your heroes. It’s all true; at least in this case.

As a die-hard ultra-liberal by persuasion and a software engineer by trade, it stands to reason that my ideologies lie somewhere in the free software movement. Imagine my delight when I discovered that none other than the movement’s founder, Dr Richard Stallman, was coming to give a lecture to the people of Leeds.

Dr Stallman’s lecture title was “For a Free Digital Society” and the subject matter was about protecting our freedom in a world where things like surveillance and restrictions on ownership of content are easy for governments and megacorps to implement. Great: so far, so good. Those are things I’m worried about too and I’m looking forward to some solutions…

Except what comes out of Dr Stallman’s mouth doesn’t sound like well-reasoned answers to difficult political questions. It sounds like opinionated, poorly-researched, accusatory diatribe.

He begins by convincing us he’s a member of the tinfoil hat brigade (I don’t have a cellular phone because they’re tracking me!) He’s right, of course, but his argument comes across simply as “freedom beats convenience in all cases” with no room for manoeuvrability. One wonders how he got to the UK to deliver this lecture without first giving his fingerprints to the US government in exchange for a passport.

He goes on to attack those of us who make a living from commercial software or SaaS platforms, saying our employers are pure evil and working for them is unethical. His solution to how people should continue making a living is “almost all software development is for individual customers so work for a company that does this.”

I personally believe in software freedom and I’m aware of the questionable practices of commercial software developers but I see my job as a necessary evil in the pre-free world we live in and I like to think I’m making a difference from the inside.

I also respect the rights of other people to hold opposing economic views to me without resorting to tarring them all with the same brush; something Dr Stallman has no trouble doing.

Later, he concludes that, since the music publishing industry is corrupt and restricting freedom, everyone should start breaking their country’s copyright laws instead of challenging them democratically.

The really frustrating thing about all this is that I concur with most, if not all, of Dr Stallman’s fears about restriction of freedom — having read sensible reasoned arguments in the past — but a whole cross-section of his audience (I discover from talking to them afterwards) had not done so and left the lecture completely jaded by the ideas due to Dr Stallman’s “Batshit Messiah” persona.

Dr Stallman is not representative of the movement he created, thankfully, and I’d encourage anyone who attended his lecture to take the time to read more reasonable literature on the subject by the FSF and also wider-reaching groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Liberty.

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Posted in: Leeds, Politics, Software.
Tagged: · · · · ·

My talks at Bettakultcha

Aug 24th, 2011
by Rich.
No comments yet

Bettakultcha is a West Yorkshire phenomenon. Started by marketing genius Richard Michie and speaking expert Ivor Tymchak, it is a night of advert/sponsorship-free presentations on any subject at all, but set to a backdrop of 20 slides at 15 seconds per slide.

I’ve had the fortune to speak at three such events. I’m by no means the star of the show, ever, but I think what I have to say is worth hearing!

Bettakultcha Leeds V, 2nd November 2010

The first time I spoke was on common mistakes in the English language, and mnemonics for remembering how to fix them.

Sadly, the video for this one is forever lost, but I’ve put the slides on Slideshare.

Bettakultcha Leeds VIII, 12th April 2011

At this much larger event with an audience of about 200, I spoke on the controversial subject Why Manchester is better than Leeds (video link, slides interspersed). With tongue firmly in cheek I saved myself from the seething crowds.

Secret Bettakultcha, 9th August 2011

The latest event was held at a secret venue, and was much more low-key. Here I attempted to convey the history of the English language in five minutes (video link; slides are hard to read so are available on Slideshare).

If you’ve not heard me speak before, let me know what you think in the comments!

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Posted in: Cultural, English, Leeds.
Tagged: · · · · · ·

“Gay” quarter

Aug 18th, 2011
by Rich.
2 comments

There’s a bit of buzz amongst the Leeds Twitterati about a proposal to designate a region of Leeds city centre as the “gay quarter”.

Aside from the interesting discussion about politics and about whether singling out an area in this way is a good thing, which is all very interesting, I’d like to draw attention to the proposed name itself.

Inclusive, tolerant, regions of cities in this country have historically found themselves labelled with the adjective gay, but in my opinion this is a dangerous and divisive anachronism.

The term gay, when applied to a person, refers to a specific type of marginalized sexual minority: specifically, someone who is exclusively or primarily homosexual. In modern times, the term LGBT is preferred as more inclusive, although this in itself fails to include so many people.

On top of that, most so-called “gay bars” are very welcoming of members of the cis/heterosexual majority as long as those people are welcoming back.

Sackville in central Manchester became known as the “Gay Village” in the 1980s but since the turn of the century it has gradually become simply the “Village”, which is a great way to indicate that there’s no good term that includes everyone.1 Similarly, most Pride events are now simply known as “Pride”.

If Leeds does name this part of town, let’s please choose a name that’s as inclusive as possible, instead of labelling it as purely the domain of one specific sexual orientation.

 

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  1. No, I’m not a fan of LGBTTIQQ2SA. [↩]

Posted in: English, Leeds.
Tagged: · · · ·

Legislating morality

Aug 17th, 2011
by Rich.
1 comment

In the aftermath of the horrendous wave of crime that spread across many cities in Britain last week, we are starting to see something even more despicable: the ever-present threat of “morality legislation”.

I know lots of people have written about the government’s response to the riots and I’m a little nervous about joining the crowd, but I feel I need to add my voice to the clamour.

In a speech on 10th August, our nation’s leader said this:

The problem with that is a complete lack of responsibility.

A lack of proper parenting, a lack of proper upbringing, a lack of proper ethics, a lack of proper morals.

That is what we need to change.

Mr Cameron, I say this: How dare you?

How dare you dictate to me or the other people in my country what is proper about parenting, upbringing, ethics or morals?

We live in a free society, and our freedom to bring our children up in the way we choose and our freedom to choose our own ethical and spiritual path is guaranteed by law. [Articles 8 and 9 of the ECHR]

Those societies where morality and ethics are legislated are generally the ones that have the biggest unrest amongst their local populations. Just look at what’s happening in the Arab world at the moment.

I agree that the crimes committed last week were dreadful, so let’s look at what we can do to prevent them from happening again. Maybe you want to start by looking at why people think that they have nothing to lose by turning to crime… is it because they have nothing to lose, as a result of the failure of the last two governments to look after the whole of our population?

Rant over.

(Full disclosure: Although I am extremely unhappy with many of the attitudes of the current coalition government, I am still – and proudly – a card-carrying Liberal Democrat. More on this in a later blog post.)

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Posted in: Politics.
Tagged: · · · ·

“Smartphones” are not phones

Aug 10th, 2011
by Rich.
2 comments

I’ve recently acquired a Samsung Galaxy S II Android “smartphone”, and I couldn’t be happier with it.

All day long and wherever I am (more or less) I have unlimited access to my email, my social networks, the news, train times, price comparison, my todo list, my calendar, note-taking, shopping lists, sudoku, maps and a hundred other things that augment my life and improve my productivity.

And then once in a while some smarmy git will say to me, “well, my phone makes voice calls.”

And herein lies the problem with the language we use. Phones are supposed to make and receive voice calls, but my device is not a phone. It’s a palm-sized tablet PC with voice-calling capability.

I probably wouldn’t miss voice calls much if my device didn’t make them. I could cope for a few hours without the ability to receive calls but I’d feel awfully disconnected without access to my email. The phone capability is a great bonus, but it’s certainly not the primary reason I own this device.

Let’s stop calling them smartphones and give them a name they deserve. I vote for “robot servants”.

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Posted in: Cultural, English.
Tagged: · · · ·

Coffee and orange squash

Aug 3rd, 2011
by Rich.
No comments yet

Just a short one today. I just really wanted to post something on my blog today. Here’s something I discovered a few months back and feel I have to share with you all.

Coffee and orange squash1.

Not mixed together, of course, but side by side. Specifically, taking a sip of orange squash when the aftertaste of coffee is still in your mouth. You’d never believe it, but this produces a completely new flavour I can only describe as “smooth and powerful”.

Give it a go and see what I mean! I have a feeling you’ll be surprised too.

Disclaimer: I drink my coffee black. I cannot vouch for how this tastes with white coffee but I can only imagine it’s revolting, as is mixing milk with just about anything.

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  1. American readers will not be familiar with squash as a type of drink. It’s a sort of sweet non-fizzy fruit juice drink. [↩]

Posted in: Food.
Tagged: · · ·

Return tickets

Aug 1st, 2011
by Rich.
6 comments

I was thinking, as I purchased a return ticket from Leeds to Sheffield, that I don’t really grasp the concept of return tickets.

A return ticket is, as you probably know, a ticket that brings you back to your origin from your destination for (sometimes significantly) less than the cost of two one-way tickets.

In the case of National Rail, the cost of a return ticket is barely more than the cost of a one-way ticket.

Or, if you look at it another way, you almost have to pay for your journey home even if you don’t intend to take it. Even more bizarrely, the concept of a “day return” means you are penalized for not returning on the day you left.

The return ticket phenomenon means that people are strongly discouraged from making journeys that do not return by exactly the same route. This means if you take in two stops in a day, you are encouraged to return to the first stop after the second before travelling home, even if this is not the most direct route, wasting time and energy on what, exactly?

I’ve always thought these two points were a bit bizarre, but figured there must be some capitalist reason behind the concept. Some way that National Rail ends up making more money by offering this service.

If all one-way fares were half the price of a current return ticket, then yes, some money (how much, really?) would be lost on people who travel in one direction and don’t come back. But what on Earth is the financial reason for giving people a discount to come home on the same day they leave?

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Posted in: Cultural.
Tagged: · · · ·

69 Love Songs and the working day

Jul 31st, 2011
by Rich.
2 comments

© 1999 Merge Records

As an extravert1 I find myself in situations at work where interactions with others dominate my day. Whether it’s meetings, asking people questions, answering other people’s questions or simply reading and sending emails, there’s always some interaction going on.

I really love that aspect of my job, which means it’s somewhat frustrating during those times when I have to sit down by myself and work alone, which do happen quite regularly.

When I have to work alone, I find that listening to music, especially music I know well, allows me to concentrate by providing a backdrop that goes some way towards replacing the interaction that drives me.

And this is where 69 Love Songs comes in. The 1999 classic by Stephen Merritt, aka The Magnetic Fields, is a collection of songs in every musical style imaginable and poking at every aspect of love and romance with an irony-shaped stick. If you’ve not heard it, give it a listen – I think there’s something there for everyone. Its relevance here, however, is that the album is almost three full hours long.

Three hours is a great length of time to set myself this simple challenge: Finish the album in one working day.

Those of you in roles like mine might find this surprisingly difficult – three hours is not even half a normal working day but the time escapes from you so fast during interactions you might find that 3 hours of uninterrupted solo work is actually quite a goal to achieve!

Any other extraverts reading my blog? Any tips for how you cope with work that demands solo attention?

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  1. Carl Jung’s definition of this word, meaning “someone who is recharged by interactions with others” [↩]

Posted in: Music, Psychology.
Tagged: · · · ·

My beef with Google+

Jul 20th, 2011
by Rich.
No comments yet

Limited, eh?

I’ve been a member of Google+ since day 1, but I’ve not really taken to it in a big way.

Initially I thought this was because none of my friends were on there, but no… now lots of my friends and other people of interest are on Google+ and (reasonably) active.

So I thought to myself what it is about the user experience on Google+ that’s holding me back.

I love the idea of putting all my contacts into so-called circles. It’s great to be able to make the distinction between friends, acquaintances, famous people I’m following, etc. and being asked to choose each time I share a new item. Facebook and Twitter both have lists for incoming data but Google+ has made it easy to do this for outgoing data.

Except it hasn’t. When I first saw the demo of circles, I imagined that it would be possible to include circles inside other circles. I have a circle called Friends and one that contains my partner and my very best friends which I’ve called Inner Circle. Now, I can’t think of any time I’d want to share something with my friends that I wouldn’t want to share with the inner circle, so it would make sense for me to include the Inner Circle in the Friends circle. But I can’t. Sure, I can put the members of Inner Circle into Friends which is fine for those 4 or 5 people, but what happens when I want to put Friends into Acquaintances for the same reason?

The clumsiness of this interface has pretty much put me off using Google+ altogether, because its major advantage over Twitter vanishes in a mess of unusability.

On a similar note, when I visit my own profile I’m presented with a feed of all the posts I’ve shared with anyone ever. Sure, I can type a person’s name in to see how it looks to them, but I really don’t want the posts I’ve shared with just one person appearing on my screen at all when I visit my profile at work or in another public place. I hate to say it, but I miss being able to write on someone’s wall and see it on their profile instead of my own.

I don’t think these are major obstacles to overcome, and I think Google+ has a lot going for it1 if it can just get over the “underlying implementation great, user experience shit” problem that so much startup software has.

Google isn’t a startup any more. They should be getting these things right first time.

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  1. The integration with my Android camera, syncing photos instantly is genius. [↩]

Posted in: Software.
Tagged: · · ·

I’m not stupid, but: what’s with “and I”?

Jul 15th, 2011
by Rich.
3 comments

Did you ever have an exchange like this with your parents when you were growing up?

Me: “Me and Mark had a great idea.”

Parent: “You mean, Mark and I had a great idea.”

This “and I” meme is stuck in the heads of many of our generation, and all over the place I see people applying it as though it’s a hard and fast rule. It’s not.

First, let’s deal with the order. Why is it “Mark and I” and not “I and Mark”? There’s no grammatical reason for this order at all, except that it sounds better to put the nouns before the pronouns.

But here’s the awkward bit. Sometimes it’s “Mark and I” and sometimes it’s “Mark and me”.

In fact, the grammatical reason is to do with the nominative and objective1 cases, which are to do with whether the thing in question is the subject or object of the sentence. Although these sound really complicated, most of us are actually very good at determining the case.

Try this trick: replace the people in your sentence with we or us and see which sounds right. If it’s we then you’re in the nominative (Mark and I) and if it’s us then you’re in the objective (Mark and me).

  • Mark and me had a great idea. ? Us had a great idea. (Sounds wrong!)
  • Mark and I had a great idea. ? We had a great idea. (Sounds right!)
  • You should join Mark and me for dinner. ? You should join us for dinner. (Sounds right!)
  • You should join Mark and I for dinner. ? You should join we for dinner. (Sounds wrong!)

In fact, if you’re having trouble remembering which is we and which is us, you can usually work out which is right by simply dropping the other person from the sentence:2

  • Mark and me had a great idea. ? Me had a great idea. (Sounds wrong!)
  • Mark and I had a great idea. ? I had a great idea. (Sounds right!)
  • You should join Mark and me for dinner. ? You should join me for dinner. (Sounds right!)
  • You should join Mark and I for dinner. ? You should join I for dinner. (Sounds wrong!)

I’m afraid once you know this rule you’ll start seeing mistakes being made everywhere!

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  1. OK; there’s not really a single objective case, but the distinction between accusative and dative is irrelevant here. [↩]
  2. Often the verb will sound wrong here so you have to go with which sentence sounds better rather than which sentence sounds right. [↩]

Posted in: I'm not stupid but.
Tagged: · ·

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