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Anarchy, FUD and Me @ the UN

Yesterday, I went to a really nice seminar about Free Open Source Software at the United Nations. I was wearing a shirt with the Kubuntu logo and showing off my installation of Kubuntu on my laptop. I was with Og Maciel and we were both answering questions about Ubuntu.

We also got to participate in some discussions as well as hear some interesting presentations. Richard Stallman the founder of the Free Software Foundation gave a presentation about freedom in cyberspace and disagreed with anything but absolute freedom. He even dropped the term Anarchy into a discussion about how Open Source software is developed.

Then Danese Cooper, the Open Source Diva from Open Source Initiative gave a presentation about Open Source that removed most of the political message and gave a practical explanation of how and why it is developed and used. Just before lunch Og gave an passionate plead for the delegates to return to their governments and persuade them to use Open Source software in the execution of their duties to protect their citizens. Being Brazilian, he used an analogy that illustrated the difference in OS and proprietary software as the difference between Soccer and American Football. Every poor Brazilian kid knows you can roll up some socks and play soccer in the street, whereas you need highly specialized and expensive equipment to play American football.

After we had lunch, I was invited to sit with Richard Stallman and Danese Cooper, we heard some presentations that were more corporate in nature. For instance the Linux Professional Institute, the IT Director for the Spanish State of Extremadura (which switched completely to GNU/Linux and even wrote its own distribution), IBM, Novell, the Coordinator of the ICT Board for the UN and Microsoft.

Microsoft was there to be dismissive and even enlisted the Assistant to the US Consulate to try to call down the head of ICT for the UN Secretariat’s presentation on citations, however it seems as if this was more Fear, Uncertainty and Disbelief on the part of Microsoft, particularly in the cocky manner that the Microsoft Adviser to the UN gave his presentation which only demonstrated that corporation’s inability to conceive of a complete solution which utilizes Free and Open Source Software.

After the IBM, presentation about Open Source and Open Standards, I was able to sound off my experiences and tried to relate it to the UN’s case. My particular view on this whole manner is that the UN needs to be empowered to be able to perserve and maintain its documents for a really long period of time. Remember ten years ago, we were all using WordPerfect and now everyone is using Word, two different formats. The UN needs to have its documents in a format that is independent from vendors so that ten years from now whoever is producing the best software, will now require a complete reformat of all the document which stretch back to the League of Nations. What happens if one of these vendors goes out of business? So the document format needs to be in an Open Standard, one which is transparent, this decision is not for profits today and tomorrow but for future generations of humans who wish for peace on Earth.

Tags: Ubuntu

Finally, I get a role in a Seinfeld episode!

I decided to make my name change official.

I called the Social Security Administration (SSA) to make sure I went to the correct office at the correct address.

Eliza-Jane and I set out. Immediately the heavens opened. We stopped in at the pharmacy to get a stroller cover. EJ wasn’t having it. She pulled back the stroller cover and happily got soaked. The neighborhood ladies’ eyes were popping out of their heads. “She’s getting wet!” I worried about her getting a chill and I couldn’t find the bus stop, so I turned tail and went back to the apartment.

We ate and I called Nathan for guidance on the rain issue. He advised us to take a change of clothes. So I poured her into her little pink wetsuit and headed out again.
I found the correct bus, and struggled on with the stroller, her bag, my bag, the umbrella, and her self. “That baby will get sick!” The wheels on the bus went round and round…we got out.

Lo and behold: a sign on the door of the SSA declared that no name changes could be had here! I stormed in and raged at the security guard. He had a stack of photocopies explaining how to get to the downtown SSA. An office just a few subway stops from our home! Obviously, this happens a lot. He asked me did I want his help. I said yes, I want his help: fix this erroneous instruction. He told me that that was the government, not him. He told me to call the 1-800 number if I want. The very same number I had called to begin with!

I stuggled out into the rain across the street onto another bus. EJ was babbling happily and pointing at everything. A man boarded the bus and looked at us. “Does that baby have a hat?” “No. No hat.” “You’re not qualified to be a mother”, he told me.  I smiled. “And who’s the father? Joe over there, I suppose.” I smiled. “They take our babies away”, he said, sweeping his hand around to indicate the black ladies on the bus. (EJ and I were the only whites  riding. ) “But they won’t take your baby away. That’s child abuse right there.”

We sat smiling until we arrived at the SSA and struggled off the bus. The man was still yelling after us. “Your not qualified! Not qualified!”

We struggled inside and I put some dry clothes on EJ. I was hungry but we weren’t allowed to have food or drink in the SSA. After about an hour waiting in line inside, the woman in front of me fainted.

After we struggled through security and up to the 6th floor, we got in line again and finally got to our window.The woman there was a balm. She chatted with EJ and complimented me on her good behavior. I got my name change! We trooped out onto the street again and got on the subway. I went the wrong way due to low blood sugar, but I threw a few grapes down my neck, turned around and finally collapsed with EJ on the bed at home.
Did you notice that a lot of people gave me rather hostile advice, but no one helped me with my child?

We like overcast Saturdays

So, yesterday we looked outside and thought, “hmm, not your normal picnic weather,” but as we had a picnic appointment with a friend and his girlfriend in Prospect Park, we decided to get prepared. We sent Edward a voice message saying that we will still meet and just walk about from there and go some where to eat instead of sitting on the grass to eat, and that is exactly what happened.

So, we met his girlfriend, Nina, for the first time.
She was quite nice, quiet and observant, yet friendly and conversant. Steph later remarked upon the similarities in personality and disposition between her and I. This all happened while we wondered through the natural forest in Prospect Park.

We exited the park at Grand Army Plaza and went past the Brooklyn Library and had brunch at Tom’s Diner, which despite having the song lyrics on the walls in many places is not to be confused with [[Tom's Diner]]. When we were all done eating and EJ was done napping, we left and at the entrance to the park separated with promises not to wait a whole year to see each other again.

Not too long ago…

The band U2 toured the world and had an interesting piece where they presented the [[Universal Declaration of Human Rights]] which was warmly received in many places, but was truncated in the United States because the audience was not nearly as receptive to it.

Today I read through the original document and could not see anything that I thought was disagreeable nor unreasonable for Americas, albeit there was no clauses that suggested that every human has the right to drive SUVs, watch large screen cable televisions and drink lots of [[Starbucks]] coffee, but that was the only thing.

It is my theory that many Americans, particularly those who are parading around with great pomp, are fearful at losing the superpower status and can not believe that an organization such as the [[United Nations]] can be trusted to look out for the USA agenda. Well, it can’t and that’s not its mandate, the UN is there to look out for the planet and if this country can not come to terms with the fact that we are not the only ones here, then there will be some pretty drastic results.

We could begin to transistion to a universal governance beneath the guidance of the United Nations, or we could lose our ’superpower’ status through violent means, and everyone is quite aware that we are under violent attack even now. We are not going to win any war on terrorism simply because the Who we are fighting is in a shadow. There is the distinct possibility that they could win, and currently are winning, especially as we are no longer allowed to carry bottled water and other liquids, not to mention many other liberties which have been extricated from our persons. The third way, and one which will even ensure that there is a greater chance for peaceful existence is universal governance that supports the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Change Attitudes, Maintain Access

At 9.20 am this morning the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Plan B for over-the-counter purchase.

In December 2003, a panel of outside advisers voted 23-4 to recommend switching Plan B from a prescription to over-the-counter drug. FDA staff scientists agreed, but a Commissioner Lester rejected approval.

In 2005, Susan Wood, director of FDA’s Office of Women’s Health  resigned after the FDA announced it would postpone the decision to make Plan B an OTC drug indefinitely.

CNN reports that in her letter of resignation, Wood wrote;

“I can no longer serve as staff when scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been overruled,” wrote Wood, who also was assistant commissioner for women’s health. “The recent decision announced by the Commissioner about emergency contraception, which continues to limit women’s access to a product that would reduce unintended pregnancies and reduce abortions, is contrary to my core commitment to improving and advancing women’s health.”

 Commissioner Lester’s response:

“the agency considered over-the-counter sales to women 17 and older fine, but that younger teens would still need a prescription — and that the agency was unable to decide how pharmacies could enforce an age limit, or even if it was legal to have such dual sales.”

This is obviously absurd. The sale of alcohol is limited to people over 21. Plan B will require proof of age in just the same manner. Obviously, Commissioner Lester was making excuses rather than being honest as to his reasons for disapproving the drug. (Conservative opponents said wider availability would lead to more teen-age promiscuity and sexually transmitted diseases. FDA operations Commissioner Janet Woodcock asserted that Plan B would lead to teenage sex cults.)

Limiting a woman’s control over the number and spacing of her children is a violation of human rights.

Fun with my Palm Pilot

So the other night, I was up until four o’clock installing new programs and learning how to do some pretty neat stuff. One program I installed on my Palm Pilot (Gawd! I love being half a decade behind the bleeding edge of technology!!) is called “Plan My Day.” Basically, it combines the items on my todo list with the Calendar and allows me to organize the order of things. Pretty neat! What it really does is force me to once again sit down in the morning and make some decisions about doing stuff, which will help me to at least feel more productive.

Another thing I have been working on is the capacity to read PDF documents on my Palm. As my university publishes the textbooks which we use in the PDF format and I’d like to be able to do some reading when I’m on the subway this is going to be an important task.

I did some websearches but did not turn up anything that would make this conversion. I did however discover that there is a utility which will convert PDF to text. Ubuntu keeps the Poppler Utilites within its repositories and one of the tools there is called, pdftotext. I love Linux and it’s great naming conventions!

It works like this:

pdftotext ImportantDocument.pdf ImportantDocument.txt

And it’s done!

Then I installed Pyrite Publishing which allows me to turn a text document into a format readable by the Palm Pilot.

pyrpub -P PDBOutput -o ImportantDocument.pdb \ ImportantDocument.txt

And I’m done, all I have to do now is sync the new document into my Palm!!
I am thinking about writing a bash script to one step this process so that it looks something like this:

pdftopdb ImportantDocument.pdf ImportantDocument.pdb

unless someone out there has already done this!

Tags: Ubuntu

Yes, EJ I can take dictation

me. me. me. me me. me.
me. me. me me me me.
me me me. me me. me.

me. me. me.

me.

me. me. me. me. me me me me me me.
me.

“Love is expressed in how we pass the bread, or how we say good morning, and not just in the big trip to Disney World.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn