Category: Four pillars

Agoramancy? A Sunday afternoon ramble

I don’t know about you, but I spend a fair amount of time looking at things that emerge from open source communities, be they free-as-in-freedom or free-as-in-gratis. At least one of the reasons I do so is to try and figure out what happens next. Agoramancy? Who knows. [For those who care about these things, the word “agoramancy” yielded precisely one result via Google.]

I used to track something called LiveSupport, which lately became CampCaster. If you get the chance, go there and take a look. Alternatively, I’ll save you some of the bother and quote some of the interesting bits from their site:

  • Never heard of Campcaster? Here’s the elevator pitch: Campcaster helps you run your radio station. Do automated broadcasting and live studio playout in one system: schedule your broadcasts from the comfort of your own home with the Campcaster Web component, or do dynamic live shows with the Campcaster Studio desktop application.

    What’s the big deal about this release? We’ll cut to the chase: Campcaster 1.1 is the first release that is stable and feature-complete enough to be used in production systems. Indeed, the Campware implementation team will be helping to roll it out to multiple radio stations in Sierra Leone later this month. Other major radio stations are starting to adapt Campcaster to their needs: Austria’s Radio Orange is adapting the playout system to work with its digital archive, while in Hungary, a network of independent radio stations is integrating Campcaster’s storage server into its IKRA project, a generic public website engine for radio stations.

    “Awesome! Where can I get it?” you ask. The first thing you should know is that Campcaster only works on Linux. We recommend Ubuntu Dapper or any other Debian-based system.

    If you have an Ubuntu or Debian system, then just click here for installation instructions. Otherwise, click here to download.

This gets very interesting. In the lead-up to Y2K, despite everything the consultants did to raise FUD amongst the billpayers, many Eastern European and South Asian countries stood their ground. Houston, we don’t have a problem. Why? Because they computerised too late. The advantage of No Legacy.

When you look at the countries that are really making use of opensource, a similar pattern emerges. People who find lock-in a luxury too far. The infinitesimal cynic in me sees PL 480 equivalents where people are forced to use lock-in products and services, where governments set vendor locks in concrete. But then I remember 1974 and Daniel Patrick Moynihan writing what was then the world’s largest cheque ever, for $2.2 billion, and then presenting that cheque to Mrs Gandhi to clear the PL 480 residues.

Back to the point. See what the CampCaster site says:

The first thing you should know is that Campcaster only works on Linux. We recommend Ubuntu Dapper or any other Debian-based system.

If you have an Ubuntu or Debian system, then just click here for installation instructions. Otherwise, click here to download.

Is this the shape of things to come? Only Linux. With a recommended distro. But possible with other distros. Only Linux.

Linux is definitely becoming more and more mainstream, and we will see variations on this type of announcement all the time.

Take The Venice Project as an example. For years people have been telling me that there’s nothing they can use to watch TV on Linux, even though I showed them magazine articles that said they could, and even tried to show them the software. Tried. And failed. But that was in the past.

What now? What does the Venice Project say about this? I quote from their site:

  • Does The Venice Projectâ„¢ work on the Mac or Linux?

  • We’re working hard on a native Macintosh Intel version and expect it to be available in the next few months. Currently the application works fine under Bootcamp but not under Parallels; it needs to access the graphics processing unit (GPU) for some of its operations, and Parallels does not support that at the moment.
  • A Linux version is also in the works.

Folks, we’re heading fast towards a world where Linux, OSX and Windows will coexist. Where the market will force people to make substitution-level interoperability something “normal” and to be expected. Where industrial-strength design coexists with elegance and coolth.

And I for one am looking forward to that new world.

A coda. You know, when IBM sold their PC division to Lenovo, I heard rumours that they did it because the management were sick and tired of the fights between their Linux guys and their Windows guys. I dismissed it as the fiction it was. But now I wonder.

A word about spam

Of late I appear to be getting over a couple of thousand spam comments a day, all ably blocked off by Akismet.

In the past, I used to go through the blocked items, just in case some legitimate comments had been suppressed. And I would find one or two a week.

Since early December, I haven’t had the time or the energy to do the blocked item check; I’ve just gone for the delete unseen.

It is possible, as a result, that I may have deleted legitimate comments. If you have been the victim of such a deletion, my apologies.

Do let me know, by writing to [email protected]. I have so far been loath to implement any other form of spam filter, especially one based on your entering Dali-clock-esque words. Your comments will help me make that call.

Setting the record straight

My musings on a post by James McGovern attracted a number of comments, and I want to set the record straight:

The only real point I wanted to make was that opensource communities are not defined by the size of their core. That there will always be a number of people more active than others. And that this is not wrong.c Openness is about equality of access and opportunity, and not measured by the actual number of participants.

I promise to return to some of the other comments later. But while I’m seeking to set the record straight, there was one other thing buzzing around my head while I was in hospital:

As a result of this interview,  a number of you commented that I seemed to separate creative people and thinkers from doers and whatever. I made no attempt to separate human beings.

The only point I wanted to make was that blogs suited thinking, wikis suited workflow and reference, and IM suited wisdom-of-crowds problem-solving. An individual is able to use all three modes of conversation.

Enough said.

You ain’t seen nothing yet

Visualisation tools are going to become more and more important over time, as we struggle with problems like “information overload”, problems that have been with us so long they’ve become cliches.

Statistics are made to lie. The lies stick because Innumeracy is rife. Despite everything that John Allen Paulos has done. And Powerpoint, usually bad Powerpoint, rules over all. What makes the innumeracy unbearable is the fact that poor visualisation techniques are then used to propagate the lies.

A sorry state of affairs? Well, that’s why I found this representation of visualisation methods uplifting.

Don’t just look at the table. Run your cursor over it. Move it from element to element. See what can be done. We need ontologies and topologies like this one to help us work out what to do. Thanks to Cory for the find.

As if I need an excuse to mention the BTO track.

It’s that time of year

It’s been an eventful year for me, what with changing jobs in March, changing firms in October, nearly moving house and then not, and finally having a heart attack a few weeks ago.

It’s been an eventful year for me, what with starting this blog in late February, and really feeling part of a small but close-knit community ever since.

It’s been an eventful year for me. I’ve learnt a lot, and you guys have been instrumental in that.
Thank you.

Have a great New Year.