I just watched this TED talk by Clay Shirky that was recorded in July 2005 but only recently posted to the TED website. Given that the talk is 3 years old, he gives a meaningful insights of our society and how Institutional thinking is working. Especially the example of Steve Ballmer not understanding Linux still holds up today (even thought Microsoft tries so hard to enter the open source game).
I suggest you spend 20 minutes watching this and reflect what has happened in the last 3 years.
I guess we are all aware that the Chinese do about everyhting that the world thinks they do no wrong and treat the human rights fair and that China is one of the best places to leave.
First they wanted us to believe that the Tibet people are wrong and evil. Well they pretty much convinced their own people, but not the world. Then they are doing a censorship of human rights, despite their promises to improve the human rights situation before the olympic games. The departments of propaganda and public security and the cyber-police, all conservative bastions, implement censorship with scrupulous care.
Now a news story (from newspaper “Beijing Shibao”) broke that the fireworks at the opening ceremony were faked and played into the live footage. How much longer do you want to be fooled by such ignorant people?
Do not support the China government in this manner anymore. Don’t be blind and believe the hype. You can now demonstrate online against the wrong doing.
This interview with Linus Torvalds is probably one of the best interviews in a long time on open source, GPL and Linux. He gives a very personal view on all topics and says it “as it is”. Especially the answers he gives on the different licenses are good and are interesting to people who think that one CFML engine is superior to another because of a license.
Here is one of my favorite quotes and also the last answer of the interview;
“Of course open source grows aggressively: what’s not to like? Low cost, great quality, and a lack of being shackled to some commercial company that you can’t really trust further than the fact that they’ll happily continue to take your money. Sure, it grows.
And yes, it does grow at the cost of Microsoft, but that’s called ’competition’. It doesn’t make it ‘cancer’ any more than it ever made it ‘un-American’.”
Always wanted to help spreading open source? Today (June 17, 2008) is your chance. Download the new Firefox 3 release and help setting a new world record.
Head over to the dedicated Firefox Download Day 2008 website to find out more.
