Harsh reality behind Apple scandal | China Watch

Harsh reality behind Apple scandal | China Watch:

"Employees of United Win Technology suffered muscular atrophy and damage to their nervous system after using a chemical, n-hexane, to clean touch panels from August 2008 to July 2009. The company is owned by Taiwan-based Wintek Corp, which produces iPhone components for Apple.

Apple Inc acknowledged the scandal for the first time on Feb 15, in its Apple Supplier Responsibility 2011 Progress Report. The company said 137 workers at the Suzhou facility had suffered adverse health effects following exposure to n-hexane. The factory has 16,000 employees.

As of Monday, 100 of the 137 had left the factory with compensation of 80,000 to 140,000 yuan ($12,166 to $21,291), according to Liu Jie, press officer for the industrial park where the plant is situated. All signed agreements with United Win Technology that exempt it from responsibility if their health worsens, Liu said."

Excerpt from "The Packet Gang" by Jamie King

A segment from a critique of the extension of the open source model of development to other areas, particularly political organizing and Indy Media:

Here, the idea of openness presents itself as absolutely inimical to the ‘dominant multinational global news system’, where ‘news is not free, news is not open’. With open publishing

the process of creating news is transparent to the readers. They can contribute a story and see it instantly appear in the pool of stories publicly available. Those stories are filtered as little as possible to help the readers find the stories they want. Readers can see editorial decisions being made by others. They can see how to get involved and help make editorial decisions. If they can think of a better way for the software to help shape editorial decisions, they can copy the software because it is free and change it and start their own site. If they want to redistribute the news, they can, preferably on an open publishing site. 

The working parts of journalism are exposed. Open publishing assumes the reader is smart and creative and might want to be a writer and an editor and a distributor and even a software programmer [...] Open publishing is free software. It’s freedom of information, freedom for creativity.[16]

Accounts such as this and De Angelis’ bear out my argument that an extreme amount of expectation is being focused on openness as an agent for change. Not only is openness central to the organisation of the social movement, but in many cases it is taken as read that the organisational quality of openness is inherently radical and will be productive of positive change in whichever part of the social-political field it is deployed.

Stallman: "Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software"

Excerpted from the Stallman: 

In 1998, a part of the free software community splintered off and began campaigning in the name of “open source.” The term was originally proposed to avoid a possible misunderstanding of the term “free software,” but it soon became associated with philosophical views quite different from those of the free software movement.

Some of the supporters of open source considered the term a “marketing campaign for free software,” which would appeal to business executives by highlighting the software's practical benefits, while not raising issues of right and wrong that they might not like to hear. Other supporters flatly rejected the free software movement's ethical and social values. Whichever their views, when campaigning for open source, they neither cited nor advocated those values. The term “open source” quickly became associated with ideas and arguments based only on practical values, such as making or having powerful, reliable software. Most of the supporters of open source have come to it since then, and they make the same association.

Nearly all open source software is free software. The two terms describe almost the same category of software, but they stand for views based on fundamentally different values. Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, because only free software respects the users' freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software “better”—in a practical sense only. It says that nonfree software is an inferior solution to the practical problem at hand. For the free software movement, however, nonfree software is a social problem, and the solution is to stop using it and move to free software.

The GNU Manifesto - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

The GNU Manifesto - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF): Richard Stallman

 "Why I Must Write GNU

I consider that the Golden Rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way. I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement. For years I worked within the Artificial Intelligence Lab to resist such tendencies and other inhospitalities, but eventually they had gone too far: I could not remain in an institution where such things are done for me against my will.

So that I can continue to use computers without dishonor, I have decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to get along without any software that is not free. I have resigned from the AI Lab to deny MIT any legal excuse to prevent me from giving GNU away.(2)"

From each according to ability = a really good system

From an interview with Linus Torvalds (chief architect for Linux operating system). The interviewer has asked him about the motivation: what was his motivation for doing all the work for free? why did he open up the project to other developers rather than view it as his own property?

LT: Well, I've put in a lot of work, and that's really what the thing has been all about: everybody puts in effort into making Linux better, and everybody gets everybody elses effort back. And that's what makes Linux so good: you put in something, and that effort multiplies. Essentially, in game theory terms it's not a "zero-sum game" at all: it's a positive feedback cycle.

Imagine ten people putting in 1 hour each every day on the project. They put in one hour of work, but because they share the end results they get nine hours of "other peoples work" for free. It sounds unfair: get nine hours of work for doing one hour. But it obviously is not.

Note that this isn't true of just the Linux developers who write the kernel code, it's also true of the actual users. Especially in the early days of Linux the users were also acting as guinea-pigs for new features and so on, and they (sometimes unwittingly) put in a lot of effort in determining whether something worked or whether it really should have worked another way. And for that work they put in they got the reward of seeing better and better systems.

What I'm really saying that there is no need for anybody to even try to put back as much as you get from the Linux project - because it doesn't really make sense. The whole project is built on the idea that everybody puts back whatever they can - and that the sum of a lot of small effort is a really good system..

Ads for activists or "activismTM"

Yesterday I posted a link to a short "helpful" article from movements.org encouraging activists to use the Android. The basic reasons:
1. More open source possibilities (than the iPhone)
2. Better security
3. Non-profit friendly
4. Growth in emerging markets.

Brian points out in the comments:

-Sponsor: Google -No mention of jailbreak/root/hacking of devices that would enable ANY phone this functionality even though they are talking about circumventing other structured systems -No mention of the fact that Google's version of "open-source" involves them currently witholding the source code to their latest tablet OS Android 3.0, which not only undermines the title but the reason we shouldn't be skeptical since it's 100% not available -No mention of the fact that all Android devices have a remote killswitch for content.. fun fact: it's a security feature to allow Google the ability to remote erase viruses that are posted to their "free" Market (This killswitch also exists on Apple iDevices, and can be turned off by hacking either one) -Speaking of their free market, they actively censor their store at the behest of their carrier partners so that, for example, the AT&T HTC Captivate cannot access software that would circumvent AT&T's draconian tethering plans -Also: they allow their partners to block whatever the hell they want, like the removal of content that the consumer does not want (like Bing search, included because of multi-million dollar contracts on some phones-yes, this really means you can't switch the phone's search to Google on a Google phone..) -This is clearly a fucking advertisement

 

Al Franken: ‘They're coming after the Internet’ - Mike Zapler - POLITICO.com

Al Franken: ‘They're coming after the Internet’ - Mike Zapler - POLITICO.com:

"AUSTIN, Texas — Sen. Al Franken claimed Monday that big corporations are 'hoping to destroy' the Internet and issued a call to arms to several hundred tech-savvy South by Southwest attendees to preserve net neutrality.

'I came here to warn you, the party may be over,' Franken said. 'They're coming after the Internet hoping to destroy the very thing that makes it such an important [medium] for independent artists and entrepreneurs: its openness and freedom.”"

Bazaar

Eric Raymond:

...release early and often, delegate everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity - came as a surprise. No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here - rather, the Linux community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches...

Should Pirate Parties Include The Coming Swarm Economy As Policy? - Falkvinge on Infopolicy

Should Pirate Parties Include The Coming Swarm Economy As Policy? - Falkvinge on Infopolicy:

"One model for the swarm economy could be a basic unconditional income for every citizen. This would solve many problems, such as the Iron Law of Wages, and promote the industry-fundamental nonpaid work. It would not fundamentally change society’s economy model, as everybody is already guaranteed basic food, board and necessities through welfare systems, but making it unconditional would remove a whole lot of costly red tape."

Twitter Still Dominated By Noisy Minority, Study Finds

Twitter Still Dominated By Noisy Minority, Study Finds:

"Though Twitter has around 200 million users, the report found that 50% of tweets (there are around 140 million sent each day) are generated by 20,000 'elite' users, or less than .05% of all users. A 2009 Harvard study drew a similar conclusion, reporting that just 10% of Twitter's users produced 90% of the service's tweets."

CULT OF THE DEAD COW: cyberpunk is dead

CULT OF THE DEAD COW: cyberpunk is dead:

"Being a progressive participant of cyberspace today is not about being elite and surfing the most underground hubs. It’s about surfing on the top of it all, on the big normal junkyard of human creation and picking up the inspirations together. It’s also about reading a book again, following an author’s thought through 400 pages instead of 140 letters. And also in the same sense: doing a website again, a static thing that waits for hundreds to come by, just like a book in the library, instead of giving daily updates to attract some other thousands that need their daily fix of info. Some books still are more actual than the daily news reports (when these were still existing, now the news must be updated all the time). And maybe the lost dreams in these books need an actualisation through a website, instead of just a quotation in the fast streams of actualities. It’s about refusing the entertainment, it’s about finding enlightment in thought processes themselves and not in what forms they have been given for representation. It’s about picking up something dead and giving it life instead of living the perpetual death of the bubble of statements."

5 Reasons Why Android is Becoming the Go-To Mobile Device for Activists | Movements.org

5 Reasons Why Android is Becoming the Go-To Mobile Device for Activists | Movements.org:

"Android, the open-source mobile operating system developed by Google, is quickly becoming the smartphone of choice for activists. It’s growing in popularity around the world, recently becoming the number two smartphone in the world behind Nokia’s Symbian operating system and outranks the iPhone in the U.S. Here are 5 reasons why Android should be on any activist's radar.

1. More Possibilities with Open Source

Android is an open-source platform, meaning that the source code is accessible to anyone, allowing for developers to create apps that extend the functionality of devices. With closed platforms like Apple’s iPhone, on the other hand, the manufacturer and/or network have much more control over what users can do with their devices."

False Fear: Cyborgs Instead of CEOs | OurFuture.org

False Fear: Cyborgs Instead of CEOs | OurFuture.org:

"The nightmare for far too many is Cyborgs. The public fears HAL, the 2001 Space Odyssey computer that killed astronauts rather than forfeit its objective.

So terrified of the sentient machine, citizens overlook the allegory. The soft-spoken, reasonable-sounding HAL behaves exactly like a greed-driven, multi-national corporation. The corporate mission is profit. With 29 workers massacred in a Massey mine explosion and 11 slain in the BP oil rig explosion in just one month last year, greedy corporations have shown they’re willing to kill rather than forfeit their profit objective."

Content farms: What do they say about what we care about? - By Annie Lowrey and Angela Tchou - Slate Magazine

Content farms: What do they say about what we care about? - By Annie Lowrey and Angela Tchou - Slate Magazine:

"Content farms are to online media what tabloids are to print. Neither journalism nor advertising, they are a trashy and addictive product, sussing out what we really want in order to give us something we don't really need—and, in so doing, telling us something important about ourselves."
...

"So what more do we know about the content farm from running through the database? It exists in the spaces that other sites neglect—answering the mundane questions we ask the Internet about our families, our friends, our bodies. It caters to our baser search instincts. What is the overall picture of us, painted by the content farm? We are, it seems, avid TV watchers who adore sports, pets, and our families, worry about our jobs, and suffer from hypochondria. But maybe none of us needed a content farm to tell us that. "

Thinking about movements.org

Some questions you might ask as you analyze movements.org:

1. who founded it?
2. why?
3. what are the goals of the site?
4. what does the group support?
5. what does the group oppose?
6. who supports the group?
7. does it seem like there is a lot of interactivity/participation on the site?
8. what are some of the noteworthy design features?

Ptoww! 2009 Summit

Joe Bageant: Algorithms and Red Wine

(Excerpt from a terrific post by a writer who wrote from the perspective of the poor, unemployed, and over-worked people, the folks the Democratic party and liberal left left behind in the 90s. The whole piece is good, an engagement with some of the problems Lanier engages, written in a very accessible style. Joe died yesterday.)

Joe Bageant: Algorithms and Red Wine:

"On the other hand, this whole business of the new hive cybernetic connectivity, could be just a swarm of data bits with no particular significance, in and of themselves, other than the magical thinking belief that they do. Which ain’t no small thing, given that what we agree upon as reality is achieved by social consensus. Hell, to some people Beelzebub still stalks the earth. To others, America is a free republic, not a company town. We all have our hallucinations.

One thing for sure. Most people in the (over)developed world think the connectivity and speed of the algorithms behind the cyberhive are worth it. Even teachers teach to a standardized test so students will conform to an algorithm, and if that ain’t hive mind, I don’t know what is."

Diverting the Radicalization Track | Hoover Institution

Diverting the Radicalization Track | Hoover Institution:

"The challenge of alternatives is not about promoting democracy; it is about diverting at-risk populations from the grip of extremist actors so that such populations have space to experience the freedom to choose. In many cases, the violent extremists exert their grip through religious arguments, which disguise their own extremist goals by hiding them behind religion and the supposed religious battle. Exploiting religion in this way helps extremists. And while religion is of course not irrelevant in the fight against extremism, and while we must understand Islam so as to reflect sensitivities in the religion and its cultural milieus, it remains true that extremists would love nothing more than to engage us in a religious debate we cannot win. We should not play into their aspiration; instead, we should engage at-risk groups based on the needs of the people — young people — who comprise them."

...

"As a result of what new technology offers, the current generation of youth is the most individually empowered generation yet. They can act one way at home and in their communities and have a completely different identity over the internet or through their mobile phones. Because the digital and technological world offers young people opportunities to generate their own media and entertainment, they are learning critical thinking through self-exploration, and they are practicing digital democracy on a daily basis, even if they claim to despise the very concept of democracy. Without their keyboards, remotes, and telephones, they assume a real-life political, religious, ethnic, or nationalist identity. Behind the technology, many of these “digital natives” are beginning to identify with a transnational youth identity. Call it a “youth party” or simply a trend. But many of these youths seem to embrace platforms that facilitate interaction, expression, self-generated media, and expansion of social networks as defining features."

...

"The entrepreneurial spirit of the private sector (especially technology companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Facebook) and its desire to expand into new markets offers a tremendous opportunity in that the U.S. government need not start efforts from scratch, create new forums, or even seek to influence the direction of these independent business enterprises. Its ambition should be to partner with companies that capture the imagination and attention of impressionable young people by virtue of what they do for profit — profit which drives their creativity and success. Whether this is Facebook and the civil liberties, platforms, and global connectivity it provides; or Yahoo and its communication services; or Google and its expansive search engines, the private sector is offering alternatives that have global appeal and universal penetration. The U.S. government must work with these companies to expand the reach and scope of what they do.

For example, Howcast.com is an American focused company that serves as a one-stop shop for “how-to” videos. The U.S. government could use this website’s platforms to make inroads into at-risk environments by creating “how-to” videos on, say, using social networks for protest and mobile phones for freedom of expression, and for providing instructions on how to get around Internet censorship. The U.S. government has, in fact, already started working with Facebook to build worldwide, grassroots movements against violence."

Facebooking for Change

Facebooking for Change:

"We are in the midst of uncertain times, but I am hopeful about the future because young people are using Facebook for change in every corner of the globe. They are building civil society in places never before imaginable, standing up to violent extremism wherever it exists and for the first time, are really aware of their value as a demographic. As a government employee who focuses on youth empowerment and countering violent extremism, all I can say is a big fat thank you to Silicon Valley for creating the most important opening of our time.

Inspired by this phenomenon, Facebook, Access 360 Media, Columbia Law School, Google, Howcast, MTV, YouTube, and the U.S. Department of State are bringing leaders of 17 pioneering organizations from 15 countries together with technology experts next month for the first-ever conclave to empower youth against violence and oppression through the use of the latest online tools."