nettime FreeSoftwaremagazine.com
Issue 1 Volume 1 of this new magazine has just hit the (cyber)stands. And, don't be too surprised, you're free to download a copy too of this 78-page publication. Some of the articles in the first issue: o File formats; format wars (Marco Fioretti) File formats: the past, the present, a possible future o XML: The answer to everything? (Kay Ethier, Scott Abel) This article weighs the pros and cons of XML for some applciations (publishing) and explores why it is the best possible solution for many programming and publishing needs. o Free file formats and the future of intellectual freedom (Terry Hancock) Information as property may be served by closed file formats, but the freedom of information requires free formats. o Creating the Free Software Magazine (Tony Mobily) A long path that takes us to the very beginning of this project. o Mac OS X: Welcome to the jungle -- a look inside the Mac OS X software ecology (Chris J Karr) o The magic of live CDs (Harish Pillay) What are live CDs, and how do they work? o Every engineer's checklist for justifying Free Software. It's not just about 'no licence fees' (Malcolm D Spence) o Smarter password management (John Locke) How to handle your passwords without getting lost o The content tail wags the IT dog (Daniel James) Without hardware and software, there would be nothing for digital media to be created on, or used with. And yet the content industry attempts to tell the far larger IT industry what it can and cannot do. o Motivation and value of free resources. Wikipedia and Planetmath show the way (Aaron E Klemm) o It's all about freedom (Christian Einfeldt) Freedom is free software's competitive advantage. o The Commons (Dave M Berry) The Commons as an Idea -- Ideas as a Commons o Let's not forget our roots (Free Software is not just about cost or stability; it's a movement that mustn't forget the principles which made it possible) Tom Chance. A PLANT NEEDS WATER TO GROW! Free Software Magazine -- by subscribing you will be supporting a magazine which believes in Free Software. All our articles are released under the GNU free documentation license, enhancing existing information on Free Software. Download your copy today from http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com Subscriptions open! Frederick Noronha (FN)Nr Convent Saligao 403511 GoaIndia Freelance Journalist P: 832-2409490 M: 9822122436 http://fn.swiki.net http://fn-floss.notlong.com http://goabooks.swiki.net * Reviews of books on Goa... and more # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
nettime Build Community: Wireless Infrastructrure and Right to Communicate
Can We Build a Wireless Communications Infrastructure That Values Everyones Right to Communicate? By Vikki Cravens, Dharma Dailey, and Antwuan Wallace Putting Equity On the Front Burner. If you believe that community based media is a good idea, then you probably think that its a good idea for all communities. Yet whether any particular community will have access to community radio or community TV is haphazard. Radio licenses may be, but most often are not, available for community use. Additionally, under existing rules, the most affordable and technically accessible type of community broadcasting, low power radio, has a secondary status-- community low power stations can be moved or even bumped by large commercial broadcasters. Community based television also lives under the shadow of industry. Because the financing for community access TV comes from the fees negotiated between municipalities and cable companies, the cable industry gets a chance to wiggle out of its community obligations every time one of these local contracts comes up for renewal. Additionally, the industry lobbies at the national level to unfetter itself from these obligations. Lastly, if communities discover a pressing cultural or civic need that needs to be expressed, such as a health crisis, there is often no immediate way for them to put in place a communication system to address their communication gap in a timely manner. If it were possible for the public to directly access the airwaves without having to negotiate with an intermediary- the FCC or one of its sanctioned industry kingpins- then perhaps it would be possible to expand community media services to all communities. It may even be possible for community based communications to spring up and build out on an as-needed basis. While this may sound far-fetched, there are technological advances that make it increasingly possible and economically feasible. There is also a legal case to be made for such an idea. The goal of a more equitable distribution of information by the public and for the public should be of paramount importance to any democratic government. Yet, far too often in the United States, approaches to public policy are couched in economic terms that favor efficiency tradeoffs over equity tradeoffs. Equitable access to a wireless communication infrastructure is even less well suited to current public policy than questions of equitable access to other resources. Favoring economic efficiency over other considerations is most logical when applied to resources that cannot be jointly consumed. But a wireless communication infrastructure based on the best of current wireless technologies- smart radio- is a public good that can be consumed by everyone including those who cannot pay. It is difficult to overstate the social justice potential for a communication infrastructure based on smart radio. In light of the drastic advances in communication technology that are taking place, we need to seriously reconsider what constitutes the public interest. As we approach pervasive connectivity over the airwaves- that is cheap and ubiquitous communication- current thinking of what constitutes public access must be changed. In this new communications paradigm at least two important shifts are possible. First, our ideas about what constitutes adequate access to communication can be radically expanded upward. Second, independent communication systems can be created and controlled at the local level without the heavy hand of government deciding who gets to communicate with whom and without corporate monopolies. These local systems need not all look the same, serve the same constituencies, or be sustained in the same ways. Smart radio is flexible enough to support many models, including home grown and ad hoc communication. I. Assume Everyone Has the Right to Broadcast. The Technical Case. The Wi-Fi Accident. The first wave of smart radio was accidentally unleashed directly on the public in 1999. WI-FI- two-way smart radios that network computers- was envisioned by its creators as a way to network offices without wires, but it quickly became a way for neighbors- all over the world- to share internet service. But WiFi is only a taste of what is possible with Low-Power Community Based Communications that use Smart Radio technology. Leading Smart Radio expert Kevin Werbach believes the best way for the airwaves to be allocated in the Smart Radio context is to assume that everyone has a baseline universal privilege to communicate. In Radio Revolution: The Coming Age of Unlicensed Wireless, Werbach states, Using a combination of the techniques outlined in this paper, it is possible to imagine a world in which anyone can be a broadcaster. The 999,999 Missing Channels of Communication. The cluster of computer and networking innovations collectively known as Smart Radio makes it possible for the airwaves to be used
nettime The Gulag Archipelago
I keep seeing the US government system of offshore and third country prison camps (Guantanamo, Baghram, etc), secret prison camps and that euphemism, 'rendition', referred to as the US 'gulag' or 'archipelago' (The Guantanamo Gulag, the Pentagon Archipelago) but seldom as the 'gulag archipelago', which is of course the title of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's expose of the Soviet system of prison camps. I thought I'd go back and re-read The Gulag Archipelago, as I hadn't read it for over twenty years. I had come to a view of Solzhenitsyn as a dour humourless right-wing dinosaur, but re-reading Gulag Archipelago, I find I'm quite wrong and he's really very funny, if funny is something you can be about such a system. I guess he uses dry humour to point up the endless absurdities of the system. This also speaks powerfully to the UK situation, with our 'little Gitmo, Belmarsh' and our appeals systems that lead nowhere and our supreme court decrying the system, which the politicians just ignore. Anyway, I'm constantly struck at how alike the basic system in the Soviets was with the 'legal' setup in the US today. Not of course that I'm suggesting that the US is managing to kill millions of its detainees (though how of course would we know?). Maybe it will all come out one day. Where is the US Solzhenitsyn? In the Engine Room (edited version) Real scope entered the picture with the twenties, when /permanently/ operating /Troikas -- /panels of three operating behind closed doors -- were created to bypass the courts permanently. In the beginning they even flaunted it proudly. Not only did they not conceal the names of the members, they publicized them. Yes, and what a word it was, in fact -- /troika!/ It bore a slight hint of sleigh bells on the shaft bow; the celebration of Shrovetide; and, interwoven with all this, a mystery Why troika? What did it mean? After all, a court wasn't a quartet either! And a Troika wasn't a court! And the biggest mystery of all lay in the fact that it was kept out of sight. We hadn't been there. We hadn't seen it. All we got was a piece of paper. Sign here! The Troika was even more frightening than a Revolutionary Tribunal. it set itself even farther apart, muffle itself up, locked itself in a separate room, and -- soon -- concealed the names of its members. Thus we grew used to the idea that the Troika members didn't eat or drink or move about amoug ordinary people. Once they had isolated themselves in order to go into session, they were shut off for good, and all we knew of them were the sentences handed out through typists. These Troikas satisfied a persistent need that had arisen: never to allow those arrested to return to freedom. If it turned out that someon was innocent and could therefore not be tried at all, then let him have his minus 32 via the Troika -- which meant he couldn't live in any of the provincial capitals -- or let him spend two or three years in exile, after which he would have a convict's clipped ear, would always be a marked man, and, from then on, a recidivist. (Please forgive us, reader. We have once more gone astray with this rightist opportunism -- this concept of guilt, and of the guilty or innocent. It has, after all, been explained to us that /the heart of the matter is not personal guilt, but social danger/'. One can imprisin an innocent person if he is socially hostile. And one can release a guilty man if he is socially friendly.) ... Up to 1924 the authority of the Troika was limited to sentences of three years, maximum. From 1924 on, they moved up to five years of camp; from 1937 on, the OSO could turn out ten ruble bills; after 1948, they could rivet a quarter -- twenty-five years -- on you. And there are people who know that during the war years the OSO even sentenced prisoners to execution by shooting. Nothing unusual about this. The OSO was nowhere mentioned in either the Constitution or the Code. However, it turned out to be the most convenient kind of hamburger machine -- easy to operate, undemanding, and requiring no legal lubrication. The Code existed on its own, and the OSO existed on its own, and it kept ondeftly grinding without all the Code's 205 articles, neither invoking them nor even mentioning them. As they used to joke in camp: There is no court for nothing -- for that there is an OSO. Of course, the OSO itself also needed for onvenience some kind of operational shorthand, but for that purpose it worked out on its own a dozen letter articles which made operations very much simpler. It wasn't necessary, when they were used, to cudgel your brains trying to make things fit the formulations of the Code. And they were few enough to be easily remembered by a child. ASA -- Anti-Soviet Agitation KRD -- Counter-Revolutionary Activity KRTD -- Counter-Revolutionary Trotskyite Activity PSh -- Suspicion of Espionage SVPSh -- Contacts Leading to Suspicion of Espionage KRM --
Re: nettime The Gulag Archipelago
my opinion is that whatever the press reports to deny, is true. andy # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
