Cross-posted in Techrights

Summary: Techrights is in the December 2010 issue of Linux Format Magazine

OR THOSE who want to know more about the history of Techrights, there is a new article in the December 2010 issue of Linux Format. The content is available only to subscribers. We thank Linux Format for generally being quite supportive over the years. There are some circles that are hostile towards us and upon closer inspection it usually turns out that they also oppose GNU/Linux and/or Free software, in which case this hostility may actually be indicative of the idea that we are effective. Techrights is still a group effort and achievements that are being made are communal, not personal. Thanks to all those who recommend the site to friends and colleagues, thus ensuring the continued growth of readership and input that accompanies it (recently we have been getting translations too).

Propeller in 2008 (I was ranked higher at some stages)

HINK before you touch Cloud Computing. The term “Cloud Computing” is vague and broad. It refers to all sorts of things and it’s malicious in the sense that it tends to take both data and control away from the user. That’s why I call it “Fog Computing”, avoiding marketing euphemisms.

Many people gradually take their computer activities online (e.g. photo sharing, news readings) and there is always risk when there is a mediating party either between peers or between a producer and a peer. This mediator offers a so-called ‘cloud’ or a Web platform under which people engage in some activities. This gives the mediator/intermediate enormous control and makes all parties dependent upon this mediator, e.g. for advertising, lifeline, costs, features, and data.

Yesterday I received another reminder of why I must not ever trust so-called ‘clouds’ or Web platforms that store my data in some mysterious proprietary form and give me no access to this data (except data slices that are presented as Web pages, not raw data).

So, what’s it all about?

AOL has money to spare in order to buy the Microsoft-funded Arrington with his rag while at the very same time AOL betrays a vast community of existing users at Propeller (good treatment to few bloggers, but not for a site with like a million members). Well, AOL has just killed Propeller with no prior warning. I have been on this platform for over 4 years and submitted about 24,000 stories there. It all vanished overnight without warning (none that I saw), just an apology. The whole site was shut down. The Webmaster appears to have also blocked the Web Archive a couple of years ago.

Propeller shows why social networks and Fog Computing are a risk. One day you just can’t access your messages, submissions, etc. It’s just like that and it’s not a violation of the terms of service. The mediator (AOL in this case) is allowed to do this.

So yesterday I asked, “Can #identica and #twitter guarantee that they won’t just suddenly announce shutdown one day? What about #reddit #digg #facebook etc.?” I wrote this as part of my Fog Computing cautionary tale. “Has #identica yet implemented a feature for exporting one’s entire user history in a way that makes it displayable/usable? And #twitter,” I asked.

“I’m not a tech person,” replied a peer, “but would assume it should be possible to transfer into own status net app (I believe it is free/libre)”

My reply was that the “first thing I did when I joined #identica was check I could export just in case. At the time there was no such option.”

As far as I know, none of the Web platforms I’m on allows me access to my own data in a form that I can interpret without access to a server I neither own nor control. If that does not scare you, wait a few years. No Web site lives forever and life of a Web site is often just a matter of money; it doesn’t need to make sense to keep it alive, it needs to make money to keep it alive.

Back to nature… sort of…

London (2010)

arlier today I watched with great patience this wonderful new interview with PZ Myers (thanks, Thunderf00t!), who spoke about his hugely popular science blog. I very much enjoy his site in which he started writing only 7 years ago. It was about 6 years ago that I started my own science blog (on computer vision) and later started another one about my particular area of focus (that was in 2005). They grew nicely and reached the niche whose narrow topic of interest they covered.

I have been thinking recently of the potential to inform people who are my peers through scientific blogs and decided that I will probably restore activity in those older two, as well as this one neglected personal blog where I hardly wrote anything for the past 3 years (it totals 1416 posts though, mostly from the olden days).

I found it gratifying back in the days around 2006 when people in my scientific field knew me in conferences because of my blogs and wanted to hang out with me because of these. The readership grew steadily as long as I kept writing. PZ Myers sees the same type of trend and Techrights, where I wrote over 11,000 posts, is the same. Perhaps I will resume posting in blog form about science later this month or next month. As always, I will separate my professional life, my personal life, and my hobbies (the 4 blogs I run will provide this separation).

On several occasions I was offered an opportunity to write a book, but frankly, I believe that books are seeing their end of days (when older generations are no longer with us, then pen and paper too may vanish). I was fortunate to get into blogging early on, thanks to Free software. It’s a rewarding experience even through there is no pay.

The programme is broken down into several episodes, each delivered in parts due to time limits in YouTube. Here is the first part of the four episodes.

• Happiness Machines
• The Engineering of Consent
• There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed
• Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering

Part 1 of 24:

[Source]

ack in early 2008 I wrote about my transition into a more idle mode — a mode which enabled me to focus on some more personal projects and de-emphasise research for a while. Between the years 2003 and 2006 I spent a lot of time building and maintaining schestowitz.com to the point where it attracted about 3,000 visitors per day. In late 2006 I relocated a lot of my work and writings to the site now known as Techrights. This is where I publish a lot of my opinions and the fruits of my readings, which fortunately helps many other people understand the industry (no spin, no bias, no conflict of interest or money at stake).

I have been thinking about returning to research at a higher level of capacity than at present because it is something that I enjoy doing and something that keeps me abreast of my field of expertise. I will write at a later date about my plans.

Always something there to remind me of Jenny.