September 28, 2008 Just received this, from the Skin Engineering Laboratory, Royal Adelade hospital;
To the family and freinds of Corwin Bridge;
My name is [withheld], I am one of the scientists working in the Skin Engineering Laboratory based at the Royal Adelade Hospital in South Australia. On behalf of myself, the laboratories supervisor, and the other scientist [names withheld], I would like to pass on heart-felt condolences on this tragic anniversary. Our skin lab has provided cells within Adelade and to Darwin for some time but Corwin was our first overseas patient and we were hanoured to be asked to help with his burn care. Unfortunately, he was so unwell that he succumbed to his injuries before we were able to provide all the skin cells we had grown for him. We would like to thank you for the opportunity to use Corwin's skin cells in our research projects, all of which are designed to improve the future care of burn injured patiets; it is sincerely appreciated.
As well as providing the clinical service to burn-injured patiets our research makes up an intergral part of what we do an who we are. Our current skin engineering research is developing a range of innovative skin regeneration products to assist with burn wounds. Without cell lines (grown from tissues provided to the lab) our research cannot progress. You generosity is one of the reasons why our standard of research is so high and we are the only licenced clinical service in Australia.
Kind regard (etc)
I did not know, but approve, that Corwins cells were used in research. Cloning cells is usually expensive, the clinic provided them free of charge. Their use is still considered highly experimental - but it is probably worth the 25 square centimeters donated to the cause.
That doesn't seem like much to me, yet the tone of the letter is that donor tissues are rare. Such young skin must be like diamonds. And this leads to the next point - the trouble with tissue/organ donation is you have to take care of it while you are well, and you have to make sure your family know and approve of your wishes.
September 23, 2008 I've been thinking, always dangerous...
On Cloud Computing
I've been hearing a lot of talk about software as a service and cloud computing. It seems to me that the terms suffer from vagueness and misunderstanding, much like "Intellectual Property" and so arguments devolve.
There are many advantages to the non-local models, usually for specific uses. For general computing, there is concern that liberty and social cohesion will suffer because of the wide scope for abuse by the vendor.
There have been times when some advantage has ended up incurring such social ill that we choose to outlaw the practice completely. Slavery? Death penalty? Beating children? These practices all have their compelling arguments. Those of us supporting societies where these are prohibited acts like to consider ourselves "enlightened". We believe that the social harm of these acts outweighs any benefits, and we have found no other way to mitigate this harm.
And there are things which are clearly socially ill which are explicitly allowed in a regulated way because we have discovered that a greater ill befalls us if we attempt a prohibition. Alcohol, tobacco, abortion, prostitution, firearms.
(Note - my examples have varying legality across the World - this is deliberate.)
Where do the various online services fit?
Peoples of free societies tend to value liberty very highly and like to encourage those acts which improve our liberty and social cohesion. We become concerned about marginalising parts of our society which don't fit with ideas about "main stream". We support initiatives to improve health care, education, and build social institutions. In these societies, anything which threatens these values is, and should, be held in suspicion. It may be that we will need to regulate online services - I hope not.
Proprietary software, particularly software patents, eulas, and draconian copyright laws threaten our freedom. We respond with mass disobedience, and free software.
The free software movement has been particularly effective, using copyleft and appealing to peoples natural tendencies to create communities and share. This has given the many free software projects a jump on proprietary-based business still struggling under the "greed is good" business models of the 80s.
It would be nice to see something which could help online services to be run ethically. GPLv3 helps by attempting to block off a vector by which free software can be removed from the community pool.
Hopefully, consumer education will be enough. Insistence on open formats, access by free clients, and so forth, will go a long way.
Hopefully the market projections I made in another forum will mean that free-software based services will be more economical than closed/proprietary ones.
September 21, 2008 A very special annaversary for us today. We'll be taking a trip to Urititi Beach to commemorate.
Meantime, I tave a week to catch up with.
Software Freedom Day was sunny and bright. There was a great deal more awareness out on the streets than last year, and we met with many people who already know about Free Software. We were able to give out a lot of stickers and pamflets, as well as our entire stock of GNU/Linux CDs.
DSE Orewa helped out by letting me run a display on one of their huge screens, and Custom Made Computers let me install Ubuntu to one of their display machines. Nobody would part with a big-screen of any description for our stalls. Understandable really.
A lot more contact information has been made available too. So, with luck, the installfest (next Sat) will be well attended. However - the big event on the HBCLUG calendar is start the of year installfest, next year. It will still be summery, free broadband, poolside BBQ, coffee and views... what more could a geek want?
Most af the week was spent in preparation - things to print out, disks to burn, you know how it is. Fortunately Cathy was also very busy with volunteer work and so on. It can be tough on a wife when she comes home early to find her husband shacked up with the computer.
September 17, 2008 SFD Council of War was under attended - what happened to all those folk saying they'd help out? Well... anyone wants to help with promoting Software Freedom should go to the Orewa Public Library or The Plaza, Whangaparaoa, at 10am, and present themselves at the SFD stall there. The ones in bright orange are the team leaders.
There will be handouts, (literature as well as software and other resources) demonstrations, hands-on opportunities, and people to talk to. We'll be setting up from 9am and running through to 4pm. The following week, there will be an installfest (hopefully at the library, but probably my place again).
September 12, 2008 Out and about today getting SFD things done. I have a central spot in the Plaza, Whangaparaoa and another outside the Rodney Library in Orewa. I've attempted to twist Eddie Law's arm to supply decent sized screens for the two sites. We'll see.
Meantime, in a break from all this GNU/Linux stuff, I'm having a wee experiment sharing some of my favorite music. To this end, I'm departing a bit from policy by adding an embedded ogg-player (macromedia flash). You should be warned: flash players are non-free software and represent a security hole if you enable them by default. If you use firefox, the NoScript plugin can switch the player on and off with it's controlling javascript. OR, just use the ogg stream below the player.
In this case, it's in a good cause. The Album is Gravity by Artemis ... produced by Magnatune. These guys give 50% of the sales to the artist and actively encourage music sharing, totally at odds with mainstream music producers. You even get to choose how much you pay, or just listen for free.
It won't start up automatically - press play, enjoy.
September 11, 2008 Once more back from Waiheke dear freinds and SFD is just around the corner. I am totally bunta'd from this last foray into the world of hard labour. I've been shampooing carpets, cleaning walls, reinforcing steps, and shovelling shells. And it's not finished yet.
Day after tomorrow (Sat) is the council of war for HBCLUGs SFD events. I have a huge swag of goodies from FSI and FSF, there will be coffee, and views, and pep talks on how to behave when promoting free sofware (as opposed to "open source" or "linux").
I have had one (1) responce to the "Why Windows" question - need more: lets get some sort of picture of how you're thinking.
This responce points to Why Windows, CAD software that only runs on Windows :-) - which is all very well but non-specific. I mean - there exists FOSS CAD systems galore. If I know what it is about the particular non-free CAD package which is not supplied in free software, and what is actually needed from the software to hand, then I can (a) find exactly the package for you, and (b) tell the almost-right projects what they need to do.
FOSS uses colaborative development. This means that people need to collaborate for it to work. By all means struggle along under the yolk of your current non-free applications, but why not run a free one in parallel? Then give the developers the sober benifit of your experience. The more of you do this, the faster the development goes.
None of this explains why you are browsing in Windows!
You can run Windows as a vertual machine within most GNU/Linux distros, and your Windows software within that. Why do everything in a user-unfreindly environment just for the sake of one application.
Meantime, those of you wanting to try out Intrepid Ibex, here is some artwork to go with it. Enjoy.
September 3, 2008 Another month down. The site has been quieter last month with around 8000 unique visitors generating just over 100000 hits. The last peak was from all the acer traffic, which has declined since the 4315 has left the market, and the Ubuntu release (another soon).
Most of the hits are still on the acer pages - heads up acer dudes - but this blog has made it to the number two slot. Also, people are hanging around longer, so people are reading the pages rather than showing up and leaving.
Half the hits come from Windows, but 2/3rds are running firefox. I see a dozen or so from Symbian though - mobile phones!
Page referrals come fram all aver the place. Many from linux on laptops (acer again) but some from blogs (thanks guys). The site licence says if you want to use stuff from these pages, you should link to them. Good to see people respecting this.
Now... what to do about all you Windows folk reading this... You have a Free Software officianado right here and a feedback button after each post. Why not take advantage of this? Why are you still on Windows?
Please understand:
This blog is a collection of my thoughts and impressions about what is going on. It should be read with common sense engaged. I will get stuff wrong. If you spot something, please let me know.
Simon Bridge 2008
To the Press:
Ladies and gentlemen of the press (including television) may use the material in this blog under the stated creative commons (attribution) with the following modifications:
Do not publish the url of this blog. (Widespread publication may lead to excessive load on the servers and crash the page.)
Attribution should, instead, be made according to the newspapers/media usual policy in these matters. (Including photo-credit.)
If there are any questions, please
contact me and ask.
Thank you.
