Just took down the wikileaks alternate site addresses. I read that there are thousands of wikileaks mirrors around now (officially Wikileaks is currently mirrored on 2194 sites (updated 2010-12-15 15:56 GMT) - source http://wikileaks.ch/mirrors.html ) , so I think my site will not detract from 'electronic freedom' by detaching the list. And anyway, it's off the front page but it's still here on this page, down the bottom!
I think there is no greater evidence of the emerging battle between archaic state-systems and future social systems than these two thousand odd milling mirrors. Every single one tells the lumbering bronto-state that information will out, that the days of censorship and re-writing history are not necessarily over, but the tools to do so are now in everybody's hands.
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I had to catch a train to work yesterday as I nearly killed my (parents') car putting way too much oil in - about three and a half litres poured into what should be a 1.5 litre oil tank. On a roundtruip to Stanthorpe I ran low, added too little then too much.
I know it was dim of me, with a dipstick right in front of me, but it made me think about software design. The first rule I have in designing systems that accept inputs from users (I'm making an analogy to car engines accepting motor oil, a lubricant input from the driver) is to build the system so the user cannot make stupid inputs.
So in a software model of my car engine, the following would be standard:
I have often thought that people who were mechanics fifty years ago would be employed in IT now. I see an evolutionary line from the engine to my Android HTC Desire smartphone. All applications have a nuts and bolts working realworld physical system underpinning them, And there's no reason we cannot take the lessons learned in software development and apply them back to their hardware foundation.
'Don't let stupid things happen' should be a maxim employed when re-designing the mechanistic systems that predate software. Early software was written on punchcards, which
is a great way to show that software can perform through a machines mechanism. Or take a look at the original Difference Engine, rebuilt over two years in the UK.
I often think of myself as lucky to have been born at just the right time to be have witnessed the evolution of information processing from a purely mechanical process (from pencils to typewriters to Burrough's adding machine) to a completely energy-based process. Like all humans who postdate an invention, I see electronic calculation as as obvious a reality as the world's roundness is. Yet to my father's generation, computing harbours a near magical level of fascination. It doesn't stop dad using a computer, it just lifts a thought cancelling veil around the machine's workings.
Machine. Think of them that way. Your computer is a machine like your car.
So why not design your car that way? Not just a tarted up front end that synches the wheel rotation to a speedometer, but put data gathering and reporting right into the pistons, use smartmetals that remember the right shape to be rather than just break when they're not that shape.
I am hoping someone may comment to point out all my suggestions have been industry standard for certain manufacturers.
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Reading Don de Lilo's Point Omega, Rudy Rucker's Wares Tetralogy
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Removed from my homepage tonight:
Whilst wikileaks fights for survival, here are some alternate addresses:
Try http://wikileaks.ca first
http://wikileaks.piratenpartei.de/* http://ljsf.org/ http://wikileaks.de/ http://wikileaks.dk/ http://wikileaks.eu/ http://wikileaks.nl/ http://wikileaks.pl/ http://wikileaks.lu/ http://wi.kileaks.com/ http://wikileeks.org.uk/ http://wikileaks.eu.org/ http://wikileaks.jmp.net/ http://wikileaks.dd19.de/ http://sunshinepress.org/ http://wikileaks.fs-cdn.net/ http://wikileaks.alios.org/ http://wikileaks.askedo.de/ http://wikileaks.dotnul.org/ http://wikileaks.no-ip.co.uk/ http://wikileaks.showeb.net/