machine-envy

I went to the premier of We’ll Never Meet Childhood Again a few weeks ago.  It was showing as part of the Human Rights Watch film festival.

The film follows the plight of Romanian children with AIDS who were abandoned to institutions in the eighties, see the HRW report here.   It shows the stories by interviewing the adults who chose to look after the kids outside the institutions they had been abandoned to.  Overall its a tough but rewarding film - make sure you see it if you can.  And congratulations Lindsay and Sam!

Just in case, as I did, you think of running a mixed windows/linux network using a samba PDC then here’s something to be aware of. When mounting the smbfs filesystem from linux, you will get CIFS extensions. Great - your uids will be the same on server and client. However, winbind will generate you a random uid when it authenticates on the PDC. What joy!

Given that these two utilities are from the same project, you think they would play nice.

We’re back.

Okay, it’s happened again - I have a new job and I’m not blogging. Sorry.

This is just a quick post to prove I still exist, and its theme is funny drawings on the web. I keep getting sent links to xkcd - this one cracks me up. And here’s a link to my favourite gaping void strip of all time.

And if you’re coming to this blog simply to find out where my writing is appearing, you should be looking here and here.

Yesterday was my first day working with the Open Rights Group. It’s going to take me a while to gain pace with the rest of the team, and the bevvy of projects they’re working on both in terms of campaigns (e-voting, more IP stuff, and the European Television without Frontiers legislation are all under the spotlight right now) and behind-the-scenes work.

I’ve been trying without success to get the widget in del.icio.us working so I can post links direct to this blog. In the meantime, here are a couple of titbits:

• Lawrence Lessig on net neutrality and municipal broadband in Wired
• Unsigned punk band make top 40 (health warning: they are represented by the PR company Quite Good, who were responsible for all the noise about Sandi Thom last year)

Like many Brits, the BBC’s Radio 4 holds a very special place in my heart. After two weeks away from home, I was craving two things - a cup of tea made without UHT milk, and the mellow sound of received pronunciation washing over me from the wireless on my bedside.

Imagine my surprise, then, when late on Sunday night I heard this broadcast. It’s a niche show called In Business, and this week’s episode was completely dedicated to companies which use and produce open source software. It’s worth listening to just to hear the wonderful voice of presenter Peter Hall endlessly repeating the words “source code”. Download it here.

James and I are off to the beach for a couple of weeks. Hope y’all enjoy the weather whilst we’re away…

Is this the hardest end of year quiz of all time? I actually worked at openDemocracy for most of this year, and I still only scored 64%. And most of that was thanks to the questions in the internet and copyright section. How much will you score?

I had an interesting phone call from a friend who wished to settle a Christmas family argument. The argument was over Deal Or No Deal. Imagine the case where there are only two boxes left closed, one belonging to the contestant and the other to someone else, and the million is in one of these two boxes. Now Noel offers the contestant to swap his box for the other, should he?

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I’m pleased to announce that as of 15 January next year, I’ll be joining the Open Rights Group as their new Executive Director!

Suw Charman, ORG’s outgoing Exec Director, has just posted the announcement on the ORG website. I’m looking forward to working with her, ORG’s Ops Manager Michael Holloway, and the incredibly diverse and talented group of people who make up ORG’s board, advisory council and army of expert volunteers.

It’s a big year ahead for digital rights. ORG scored a massive success with their Release The Music campaign against the extension of copyright terms in sound recordings, but this recommendation will need pursuing in Europe, where the music industry has vowed to take its rhetoric next. And there’s a lot more going on which requires the scrutiny of the digital rights community - like the e-voting pilots scheduled for this year’s local elections in March.

Of course, joining ORG means I’ll be leaving my post of Technology Director at openDemocracy. I’ve had a great two years there - watching the website go from strength to strength and working to build and launch a sister website, ChinaDialogue. I’ll miss the friends I’ve made there, they’re some of the most dedicated and talented people I’ve ever worked with. I wish them all the best of luck in continuing to develop what I believe is a worthwhile and necessary exercise in political analysis on the web.

I’ll still be writing my columns for openDemocracy and the New Statesman. All in all, it’s going to be a pretty busy year - I’m looking forward to it already.