DoctorMo's Blog

Last night I got accosted by a political activist in Harvard Square T station. She was pleasant, and so I asked her what she was campaigning about.

She’s handing out information about LaRouche, someone I have not had the misfortune to read about before. He’s got all the answers to the economic problems of the world, apparently.

So she explains to me how it’s really all Britain’s fault, how the British Empire has conspired against the United States to control the worlds resources through international banking. I can’t remember too much else because we ended up getting into an argument about computers and OLPC, she said “A computer won’t put shoes on a child’s feet” and I contoured a laugh. I tried to explain about the value of education in making people self empowered and thus able to make their own damn shoes if they need to. But she wasn’t convinced.

So we parted ways and she left me reading LaRouche’s “On the Next Step” on my way home. It’s a pretty big rant, it’s rationale is typical of those who are annoyed no one believes what they believe, but can’t be bothered to actually explain why.

For instance, it seems LaRouche has pretty much given up on Europe. It’s banking system he says, is irrecoverable. The system he promotes is one where the banking reserve system is directly controlled by the US government. In fact even the static exchange system means all foreign banking will be controlled by the US government. I think he’s just annoyed that in Europe the banking system isn’t joined at the hip with the governments any more and a system for static exchange wouldn’t allow US governmental control over Europe.

Not to say that there isn’t plenty wrong with the liberal allergic British government.  But there are better ways of designing international banking mechanics than joining it up with political governments.

It seems he is desperate to figure out a solution, whilst being desperate to avoid socialist mechanics in his beloved capitalist ideals. Although at least when it comes to the USA, his solutions (how ever they are devined) seem to correlate with a number of other sources I’ve heard.

The year before last, I with the help of my friends in the Massachusetts LoCo team put together a project which pre-funded the creation of the Ubuntu Aluminium Case Badges. It was a fairly good experience, we had 19,000 made at a cost of 19¢ each and I learned a great deal about what it takes to operate a physical business with logistics and dealing with the emails asking for singles.

So LoCo teams are running out again, I has plans on doing a similar project, where everyone would get together and fund a large shipment. But ZaReason were rightfully getting impatient with me, I was trying to sort out some of the back end tools (which non businesses don’t have set up normally) and so decided to get them made themselves.

I asked if they could make them available for sale on their website,

ZaReason Website

These are in strips of 11 for $5, this comes to 2.2 times the price that our public service price came to. Though that’s not a surprise, these ones have a better protective layer than the first batch and handling, shipping and plenty of other factors come into play when your dealing with physical goods of a small valuation. Now everyone who needed just a couple can get their hands on them. Thanks goes out to Earl at ZaReason for sorting this out.

If there are still groups (LoCos, other businesses) that want hundreds, we can always persist in a Group Buy effort again and get a better price. But it depends on demand. Email Me.

My good friend leftyfb asked me to take a look at a LED display system, it’s one of those funky arrays of coloured LEDs that allows you to program in various messages.

Problem is, this display (SLC16H-IR aka CL-A7×80RG) doesn’t have any linux based software. But there is an ancient windows program that does work in wine. Job solved you might think? Well not quite, how about if we want to script this thing or tie it into our emails and have blinking lights for breakfast?

So I had to set about reverse engineering the serial protocol by using a program running in wine that was connecting via a serial port. I did this by firstly downloading a program called slsnif, it’s old and hasn’t been updated for 3 years, but works.

This device is running over USB, so it has in it a usb to serial chip supported by the linux kernel, this produces the node /dev/ttyUSB0 when it’s plugged in. So I just tie this serial port into slsnif like so:

slsnif /dev/ttyUSB0 –color=black -s 2400 -x

This creates a new node called /dev/ttyp0 where the signal is forwarded.

I then used this in wine, creating a symlink from /dev/ttyp0 to ~/.wine/dosdevices/com1. Loading the SLC16H editor.exe program via wine, I was then able to use each of the functions via COM1 and decode the protocol from the output from slsnif. Here is my results for anyone else with this device: Launchpad branch with protocol and code

Then using this protocol documentation (always remember to document!) I created a quick python script which will open a serial port specified and insert messages.

Now there was one snag, the LED display is supposed to support 8 user defined images. I worked out how the editor.exe program was trying to set these images into the device (and documented it) but the defice just returned an error code when ever either the original app or my script tried to set them. This is one reason why all devices should come with full disclosure of protocols, not just obscure windows apps. We can’t fix anything if you broke the app.

Now with all that done, I just have to give this LED sign back to my friend…

Today I’m going to do a round up of some of the great Ubuntu related Art works I find. Most of what I find comes from DeviantArt, since that is where I post my own inkscape created works. So Enjoy:

Why doesn’t it work!	Intrepid Ibex?	Gnu with your Linux?	Cartoons?

Here are all of DoctorMO’s Ubuntu Favourites in a nice gallery.

Update: The ubunchu managa was translated into english comic, see here.

The ubuntu community is one of the most enjoyable I’ve ever been a part of, it has a much more diverse set of people and ideas than other development communities, but retains a strict sense of community and togetherness.

I think this has a lot to do with the ideals behind the community, it doesn’t feel disingenuous like some commercially engineered communities. I think is a reflection of the separation between Ubuntu development and commercial interests (Canonical) on the developers side.

You never get Canonical Support services trying to interfere with the Ubuntu Forums and their no replies team. For a start it’d be a waste of time, they serve very different markets and needs.

But sometimes you do get troubles where interactions between members isn’t ideal. In societies, it sometimes doesn’t matter if your right or wrong, it matters how your positioned in the community. If your seen as imposing, distant and dismissive then your only going to ruffle feathers.

The case of the notorious notifications is not a failure of reason or logic, but a failure to see things from a community perspective. That a community is really made from real live human beings, that most of the time are emotional, reactionary and sub-consciously thinking animals. What is most interesting is that the logic of humans changes from individual rationality to a more misunderstood group rationality.

I know as programmers and developers we link to think of ourselves as rational, post-modernist enlightened beings. But that kind of flight from what we really are, I think, does nothing but disadvantage community communications and cohesion.

I think you can engineer community space, but not the people that fill it. Likewise I don’t think anyone can expect individual rationales to relate to group rationales and complain that people are being irrational when they don’t fit the prescribed pattern.

I’ve decided to create a new launchpad group for ubuntu based research activities.

I will try and encourage all developers, who want to spend time testing experimental features or crazy ideas, to join this group so we can see what kinds of things we’re thinking about in the far future.

Too long have we gotten the image in the FOSS world of being only concerned with copying features and obvious feature improvements. Well now I think it’s time we had a group where more mad scientists can get together and chat about the stuff that won’t be in until Ubuntu 11.10.

I may try and encourage a mailing list as well, it would be good to bring in ideas from ubuntu brainstorm when they’re obviously very creative and not just a progression of existing features or bug fixes.

Ubuntu membership is an interesting idea, it allows people who have been very active in the ubuntu community, to be labeled and rewarded with extra resources.

I wished to become an Ubuntu Member so I could have my blog entries relating to Ubuntu put onto the Planet Ubuntu aggregation service.

So tonight I got my chance to prove to the Ubuntu Americas members that my contributions are significant enough to merit membership. Details have to be written in a wiki page where any existing members can provide good feedback.

So during the meeting, the votes were all positive. And I’m now an Ubuntu Member. I think the Case Badge project was a good community visible thing, unlike the coding projects I’ve done since. So now I’ll be able to have ubuntu labeled “business” cards, an @ubuntu.com email address and all the other fun things that membership grants.

I’ve heard it a lot, civil service employees deliberately creating work, or maintaining work for themselves so they don’t get fired or moved.

It happens in private companies too, though a good manager or COO should be able to clear such rubbish from his organisation.

See there is a misconception about work. If the work needs doing, then you will always be employed to do something you already know how to do. But if that work no longer needs to be done, lets say because it’s done by a machine now; then you find yourself without a job, right?

Well no, a great majority of the companies I’ve worked for, have always had a shyness for making people redundant. Some companies go out of their way to find new positions, if they can, during economically certain times.

I’d also suggest that making jobs redundant is a requirement for progress. Doing more with less should make everyone better off. It’s only when the progress is owned as assets that it becomes a problem, because then you have one person benefiting and part of that benefit comes from resources other people would have enjoyed.

In Perl programming we are said to be lazy (in a good way), “don’t do every day, what you can spend 5 days fixing forever”. Remove work permanently from your plate, because there is so much more to do that is so much more useful.

In the United Kingdom we have a system of government quite unlike anything else. The system has an unelected head of state (The Queen) an unelected upper house (The House of Lords) and unelected judiciary (Judges) and unelected local, regional and country wide civil service (Indeed Minister).

The only two parts of the running of the country that are elected are local councillors and peers of the lower house (House of Commons) also known as Members of Parliament (MP). The leading party in the lower house goes on to form the Government and the leader of that party goes on to become Prime Minister. And even that is highly stacked in favour of the existing parties, with it’s first past the post voting system. Proportional Representation and Instant Runoff feel like they are hundreds of years away.

Currently the once Labour government lead by Gordon Brown is trying to sneak in ID Cards and the National ID system through as many back door methods as possible. Merging them with passports, forcing immigrants to carry them, forcing airport staff to carry them. ID cards in general are not so bad, especially when they aren’t governmental controlled. The national ID database on the other hand, is a heinous crime against civil rights. not because this Government is THE most incompetent bunch of technophobic fools who should never be allowed near a computer, not even because the Government has a hideous track record of keeping information about it’s people safe; but also because that information they want to store is not the governments to own and control.

A person of a country has the right, in my view, to own and control the information about themselves. To call upon any secure and trusted third party to manage and hold their information. For that information to conform to a strict set of standards and for access, viewing and searching of that information to be controlled by either the owner or a court order.

The owner of the information may be a legal guardian of a child for instance, but mostly it will be the person themselves. I see this kind of system working in conjunction with existing GPG cryptographic signing and trust signing profiles. I want this data to have viewing access controls and for EVERY access of any part or search of the data (where the person was found in a search) to be logged and signed in such a way as to make it difficult to forge.

There are some very good discussions that could flesh the system into an evidence based and logical system that prevented the vast majority of fraud and theft of identity. But these kinds of forward thinking systems are no good unless the people of England and the UK by extension take loss of liberty seriously.

We as the people of UK must make a priority of learning about the importance of civil rights, free speech and liberty in general. Teaching others if required about the dangers of being complacent and the bloody mess a it would leave if we had to dig our way out of a real fascist state.

See No2ID for further information on resisting this liberty land grab.

Just a quick note today.

I have a long list of feeds that I read, lots of them are comics. One of the interesting ones I found was called ‘The Dreamer‘

It’s a very well drawn comic featuring a woman who seems to swap lives every time she goes to sleep. From her life in the modern world to her life in the middle of the American revolutionary war. It’s history is pretty good and the story is unfolding so well with each update.

I highly recommend anyone interested in some of the history and/or reading a great comic online.