A new laptop and operating system…
After a busy week, my new laptop and operating system arrived. I currently have two Dell PCs at home, one of which is about nine years old and runs Windows 2000 (but still 
runs very well). (I have been told that Windows 2000 was the first, good operating system that Microsoft made (and this comes from the most computer-literate person I know and someone who is a big fan of Linux-based operating systems).) Despite the fact that this computer is extremely reliable and runs extremely well, it is showing its age and becoming more difficult to use. As I said, the computer runs fine, but its connectors and ports have slowly been becoming more obsolete or, as the general computer manufacturing and retail industry shifts, these are becoming more difficult for me to maintain. I could easily replace the 1.1 USB card but other features are becoming much less common, like the slots on the motherboard. Or, it is that the 2000 OS itself simply cannot support some new devices and drivers. Hence, the new laptop mentioned in the title.
The new laptop is another Dell (I almost bought an MSI sub-notebook but Dell had a good sale on a new model and I teach at at a university which often buys Dells and so I can get support or be able to scrounge spare parts). I couldn’t buy this model without the operating system (Microsoft Vista) it was advertised with or I would have had a Linux-based operating system installed. So, I asked a friend to help me partition the hard-drive and add Ubuntu on the other partition. I wanted a third partition for data but, alas, there were problems with the configuration that we could not figure out. So… Vista was nixed and now it simply has the Linux-based Ubuntu:
I really like Ubuntu so far… it is simple and quick… it seems very stable and it is a lot more secure… it came with very useful software… and it is all free.
I have, more and more, become a supporter of the idea of Open Source and really tired of the large companies, especially software companies, becoming too dominant, too large, too powerful, and structuring the industry to maximize their profits (instead of the users’ profits (financial or otherwise). Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, and many others have turned the indsutry into a obsolescence-minded, control-driven and sometimes disempowering space. And I am really getting tired of how they more and more treat the people who use and rely on their products like mindless consumers. More simply, I do not like the fact that they make software WAY too expensive.
I do not mind that people might charge money for software… I purchase software all the time. But I do not like the fact that some companies get too large, buy up the compeitition so that the industry becomes a oligopoly in some ways and an oligopsony in others, and that they accelerate obsolescence for their own purposes. Usually, open source software is free but sometimes people do charge money for it (more like they are selling support for the software). That is why I like to purchase software made by individuals or by smaller, independent companies (and, of course, I buy games and DVDs all the time).
But, as I said, I have started to become tired that a few large corporations dictate too much of what goes on in the industry… especially so because hardware and software have become critical to the operation of modern society. Hence, I have made a conscious choice to move gradually to Open Source software. I still have another PC running Windows XP and another at work, so I still will use commercial and proprietary software (there are a lot of Apples there too). But over the long term I am hoping to one day completely be free. SO far, I think there are extremely good quality software out there that is open source and/or free (GIMP (raster-based image manipulation), Open Office (word processing, spreadsheets, database), Firefox (web browser), Thunderbird (email), Word Press (blogging software), Media Wiki, Audacity (sound editing), KompoZer (html/web editing and design). There is Inkscape (vector-based design software) which is really useful but is a little clunky since it has not been in development as long.
I like the idea of Open Source because it is community driven and does not have, as part of its core identity, the need to maximize profit and drive for obsolescence.
A while ago, I came across this essay which presents a convincing evaluation of Open Source / Free Software. It comes from 2003 and is very detailed, and is worth reading: “Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!” by David A. Wheeler. A pdf version from 2003 is here and an updated (2007) html version is available here.
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Fabricating Niger evidence?
This is a very interesting story… I cannot comment on its veracity at all but it is very intriguing (and disturbing). It all makes me think that the Bush?Cheney era was one of the worst in U.S. history.
Famous mercenary corporation is rebranding… Blackwater will now be known as Xe.
Blackwater Logo... hmmm... black, red, white... whatever you think abou the company, this does seem to be a very strange colour combination for such a company.
If you have never heard of Blackwater U.S.A., it is a private military contractor or, more prosaically, a private mercenary army. It has become infamous for its high profile (and big-money) security contracts all over the world (they famously protected the controversial J. Paul Bremer while he was running Iraq after George W. Bush ‘liberated’ it. They are also infamous for killing civilians, enjoying immunity from prosecution while in Iraq, endangering U.S./coalition troops with their trigger-happiness, and then getting banned by the Iraqi government from operating in Iraq. (By the way, they now operate throughout many U.S. states and were on the ground in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, see Jeremy Scahill’s book which is very interesting and, I should say, frightening.) In the end, Blackwater was just the most high-profile security firms now operating all over the world.
Talking Points Memo carried an Associated Press story by Mike Baker that describes Blackwater Worldwide decision to re-brand to “Xe” (apparently pronounced’ zee’). So, going along with multi-national-corporation-groupthink, the best way to revive ones tarnished image or ‘brand’ is not to take responsibility for ones actions and change the way one does business but simply to re-brand and change the public’s perceptions of the company. Apparently, Blackwater wants to focus less on providing security and focus more on training.
Alan Greenspan mask
When looking around for information for the previous post, I came across this interesting image on the Climate Progress website. Alan Greenspan was a follower of the crackpot idiosyncratic Ayn Rand and her Objectivist ‘philosophy’ (or whatever it is was called). When Greenspan was brought before government committees to testify as to why he could have allowed the deregulation of the financial system* he basically renounced his previous intellectual heritage, including Rand. The many Rand followers quickly denounced Greenspan and continue to cling to their ‘market-needs-to-be-free’ philosophy.
CBC’s The National had a good piece a while back on Greenspan and his changing legacy. You can see it here.
*which is the basic cause of this whole economic mess… but, it should be pointed out, this is not entirely the fault of Greenspan because WE ALL have been living off the phantom wealth that this decades-long financial bubble has generated.
The triumph of global capitalism…?
I have been fighting a very persistent cold these last few days and in addition to making sure I could deliver my courses and finish course-prep for a brand new class, I have been lying in bed reading some old issues of Harpers and The Atlantic. I came across this passage in the book review section from a June 2008 issue of the Atlantic that I am sure the author wishes s/he could take back given the economic collapse that began to be noticed in August, just a couple of months later:
First published in 1944, a year in which a planned economy was the norm in democracies as well as in collectivist states, Hayek’s denunciation of state control over the means of production was breathtakingly audacious. Yet his book… turned out to be perhaps the most important intellectual salvo in the battle that not only brought about the end of Communism but also eviscerated the elements of socialism that had transformed nominally capitalist economies into mixed ones. Through such influence and its ripple effects, this seminal text may well be said to have helped foster today’s triumphant global capitalism.
The short review is of a new edition of F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. I have no idea who F.A. Hayek is but he seems to be one in the long line of free-marketeers which would include:
- Ronnie Reagan (didn’t he single-handedly crush Communism with the power of his rhetoric? At least, that’s what all the Republican historical revisionists have been saying lately)
- the recently disgraced Alan Greenspan (the former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve who was known as the ‘oracle’ by all free-marketeers who have been following him these past twenty years)
- and every and all so-called capitalist who has been crying that the market needs to be free and unregulated but who is now (as usual) running to government with wheelbarrows asking the government to fill them with (future) taxpayer dollars.
The truth is, there has probably never been a true free-market, except on the level of local business and entrepreneurship. Even the U.S. is a bastion of government intervention and wealth-spreading, except the government intervention and wealth-spreading has been in favour of corporations and the uber-wealthy. I was a little amused when, during the U.S. Presidential election, Republicans (as they usually do), accused Obama of wanting to spread the wealth. I mean, what has Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, etc. been doing these past decades but spreading the wealth… and usually to the wealthiest of Americans and multi-national corporations? Today, with the costs of secret projects and Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. spends well over 1 trillion dollars a year on defense. And the majority of that spending goes directly to a handful of the biggest corporations and military contractors. Talk about wealth re-distribution. For a country that has severely crumbling infrastructure, cannot or will not ensure that its citizens receive a basic level of health care, where there is a surprising amount of poverty and the biggest income gap ever seen, and is facing an economic crisis that looks more and more like it is the beginning of the end of the American Empire… they are still living under the Cold War illusion that they represent a completely free market-driven economy.
Time cover story on Corporate Welfare.
But… back to the Atlantic review of Hayek’s book and the rather self-delusional statement about “today’s triumphant global capitalism.” Even though it should be obvious that without some sort of government intervention, we (and by we I mean most everyone in the world) would sooner or later (as some already are) be rioting in the streets and fighting over the meager resources, there are still too many who are clinging to their twentieth-century ideologies and who, when we do manage to climb out of this financial mess, will go right back to demanding that capitalism needs to be free, that capitalists do have the public good in mind and would never endanger the rest of us, and that government has no business in the back-room deal making of the uber rich (but, of course, the guaranteed loans, subsidies, and eventual bailouts still need to be in place). So let’s all say it one more time: LONG LIVE THE CORPORATE WELFARE STATE!!!
If you want to read a good article on the excesses of Wall Street from a former insider’s perspective, look at Michael Lewis’ “The End” at Portfolio.com.