Category: The Undefined Remainder

Geeky stuff. Internet, Games, Free Software, Sci-fi etc.

The reverse fallacy of impartiality

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The use of impartiality when one attempts to argue his position is nothing more than an implied ad-hominem.

Today I went through this article which basically attempts to prove that the sole reason for the degradation/change of PC gaming is Piracy and it made some quite compelling arguments for his case, based on the heavy use of facts and the neutrality of the autor. The article was well written and made some strong points against piracy and I found it via a link on Reddit by someone off-handedly pointing to it as the explanation of the Death of PC Gaming, (which, much like Linux conquering the desktop, is perpetually just around the corner it seems) showing how effectual this article can be as an argumentation hammer.

As a supporter of file-sharing the article hit a nerve. While it was sufficiently well written, I did find quite a lot of objectionable claims inside which should be challenged in order to show the cracks of the general argument against file-sharing. To this end I’ve decided to start a small series to analyze the bad aspects of piracy, whether it is indeed destroying the PC game industry and hopefully provide a stronghold in case this 30.000 words monstrosity is thrown at you as a counter-piracy nuke.

And I’m going to start from one of the first things the author attempts to prove. His impartiality.

This is something that I very commonly see used as a way to grant more credence to what one writes but then abused in order to hide the very real biases which lead to uncharitable interpretations and simply negative light on the way one presents the facts. In this case, the author begins by pointing out how disconnected he is from the game industry or from the file-sharing networks.

Before going further, I must explain some relevant facts about myself. At 37 years of age, I’ve been gaming for over 20 years now on a variety of platforms including the Atari 2600, Amiga 500, Nintendo 64, and of course, the PC. I currently game exclusively on the PC and do not own any consoles. I’ve written over 40 different detailed tweak guides covering a wide range of PC games and various versions of Windows over the past seven years. I am not sponsored by any hardware or software manufacturer of any kind. I am not involved with The Scene, nor do I receive any income from any piracy-related websites. I was not paid or sponsored in any way to write this article. In short, I have little incentive to write a biased article. I feel I’m as qualified as anyone could be to give a balanced view on this topic, free from any commercial interests in either side of the piracy debate.

And all of this is irrelevant. It is a distraction which attempts to give more weight to what he’s going to say later on and diminish the opinions of those who do not meet his standards of “impartiality”. It seems like what I’ll call a “Reverse fallacy”. The explicit notice he’s giving to his impartiality serves no other purpose other than to imply that what those who are related to the gaming industry or the file-sharing networks say is somehow less valid. That would normally be called out as a pure Ad hominem, as the connections one has do not in the least diminish the arguments they make. In fact that actual case may be that the connections one has, are because of the opinions they have on the matter as you wouldn’t really expect a strict anti-piracy pundit to be connecting with The Scene, nor is it likely that a file sharer would be leading an anti-piracy initiative (although of course, there are humorous exceptions)

However the author of the article, by simply pointing out his own impartiality deftly avoids any accusations of ad hominems while still implying just the same kind of fallacious reasoning to dismiss the antilogue. And the unfortunate fact of the matter is that this tactic works very well. In fact, it’s the favorite trick by which lawyers stack the deck against file-sharers which have geen sued by the Content mafia. When such people request a trial by jury, the lawyers methodically filter out any jurors who have any knowledge at all of file-sharing programs and culture, which naturally leaves only the most computer illiterate or those who have consciously avoided file-sharing in the first place. The audience is conveniently stacked towards those who are less likely to understand the complexities of file-sharing (eg. that a link to a link is not the same as distributing copied CDs) or already sufficiently swayed to one side of the argument.

You see, on some matters there is just no perfectly middle ground. While there is of course variation in the intensity one supports one camp or the other, they still support one side. The debates on Piracy are like that. You either support it, or you oppose it. You either consider it wrong, or you don’t. Even the ones who could validly say that they belong in either camp because they actually don’t know enough about it to express an opinion in the first place, end up practically  supporting the side which is in power. In our case, someone who does not know what piracy even is, is simply going to go with whatever the law says, i.e. whatever the corporate lobbyists say.

But the point is that whichever side of the argument one belongs to is irrelevant. My arguments are not going to diminish when I announce what I think from the start. On the contrary, their purpose is to provide the basis for my ideas.

In the case of the article at hand, the author can’t avoid but show his very strong pro-copyright, anti-piracy bias almost from the very start. In fact, as long as I saw the copyright notice on the footer of his site, I immediately knew where his support was going to lie (I mean, a vanilla copyright notice on a website? Seriously?). And his bias was showing quite a lot, no matter his announced impartiality. The way he pointed to torrent sites was in an amazingly negative light designed to create the emotional reaction one has to leeches. His dismissal of the possible motives of file-sharers and his boiling it down to “flexible morals” was halfway insulting. While it was true that he did avoid some of the classic emotional fallacies copyright-purists like to make (eg “Piracy is theft”), he couldn’t avoid marginalizing ((example: When discussing The Pirate bay, he put huge weight in the sources estimating the profits of TPB while providing one sentence showing the TPB’s side. Then he used on whole parahraph to doubt it and triumphantly posted addendums which he thinks support his cause, such as the loss of the first TPB trial and the selling cost of it to the Game Factory. No mention of the scandal of the biased judges or the general fact that any site in the top100 internet sites would sell for similar amounts.)) if not ignoring all the positive elements of piracy and grossly highlighting all the negative ((Take for example how he pointed out how he mentioned the large piracy rate of World of Goo while not mentioning at all the huge increase in sales during their “pay what you like experiment, or when dishing GNU/Linux users how he failed to mention that they were the highest paying during the World of Goo experiment. Hell, just the TPB logo with the dollar sign is a huge subconscious signal.)).

This is not impartiality. This is a classic example of having one opinion and then being selective with the facts so that your opinion has more basis. I have an opinion too, and a biased one at that. I’m pro file-sharing in the sense that I do not consider it does any harm and that in fact it helps. The difference is that I do not hide behind neutrality as this only annoys. Rather I declare it proudly and then I explain why reality is such that my opinion is warranted. I see how things work and then form an opinion about the ethical rules we should have to optimize the good aspects. The author on the other hand seems to have an opinion already ((It seems to be: “PC gaming was better in the last few decades and should remain as it was”)) and this drives a selective bias in his interpretation of the facts and reality.

By pointing out his reverse ad hominem and his lack of impartiality, we thus begin on our journey to deconstruct the lengthy anti-piracy article, or any article for that matter, while keeping in mind that a lot of information has been negatively represented or simply omitted.

The Nethernet is back!(?)

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The Nethernet, the original PMOG, is back in a surprising turn of events.

Image representing PMOG as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

2010 enters with a interesting bang. The previously through dead PMOG (Passively multiplayer online game) Nethernet has returned from the land of 404 apparently, in what seems like a total change of heart from the part of the developers.

By now information is still scarce. Some of the old faces are back, the game’s code has been rolled back to a previous version which had far less tools and did not use the purchasable currency, bacon, which is btw not going to be returning. This is quite perplexing since from the information we were given after the game was originally shut down, it looked as if the old code was just not salvageable (Emphasis mine.)

For the record, I’d like to say I think uselessness is dead on. There is very, very little hope of saving TNN/PMOG, even if it were to go open source. This is for a number of reasons, having seen the code, I may have a slightly better idea than the average player of just how server hungry, and just how hacked together the majority of it is.

Additionally, while I worked at GameLayers, there was no magic wand that could be waved to revert back to a previous version (on the server side). At time we’d revert to a later commit, but to revert to one of the final PMOG builds or a 0.8 version of TNN is more than likely impossible — the data just isn’t there.

It seems then that Gamelayers did exactly what was then seen as a bad move, possibly wiping a lot of data in the process, as seems to be the case.

Still though, this means that they are still using the old, badly-optimized code which was severely overloading their servers. They mention that now they are funded for a good part of 2010 which obviously means they’ve got new venture capital injections but from whom and why we still don’t know. I find it hard to believe that it’s from the old venture capitalist and I’m guessing that someone new has stepped up.

Half-arsed theory I’ve got now is that after Gamelayers tried their luck in Facebook with Mafia Wars clones and the like, they quickly discovered that that area is over-saturated already and not easy to monetize. Furthermore, the passion of the Nethernet refugees and the interest in making another PMOG (and the subsequent creation of Nova Initia to replace the Nethernet) gave them hope that there is still interest in PMOGs. That, combined with the fact that The Nethernet was more than likely their favourite project, drove them to attempt and reignite the game.

So there is a lot of speculation at the moment until the original developers chime in but honestly, I’m not expecting the whole truth from that front either. This comeback is just too weird and they don’t have exactly a great track record on openness (just look at the suddenness and secrecy which surrounded the original shut down and months previous to that). However on the positive side, they seemed to have moved to a donation-based system rather than perk-purchasing system which is a good move imho. If they are smart, they’ll open source it as well and let the community help out with optimizing the code as much as they expect it to be improving the content. They seem to recognise the power of crowdsourcing and hopefully they’ll recognise that providing freedom to their playerbase is also a powerful form of reward on its own.

So lets see what the future holds for the revived Nethernet. Many are pessimistic and expect it to shut down again in a couple of months so obviously the community’s trust has been wounded. Still many more are glad to have it back again. In any case, it’s an interesting case study of internet startup development and progress.

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You now have an urgent mission

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OMFG! A Divided by Zero T-Shrit! I must have it!

I just found out about this T -Shirt. Needless to say, I must have it.

Db0 T-Shirt

Unfortunately, I tried to buy it and they only ship to the US at this point so I have no choice. I must ask for the help of my US readers.

Can one of you buy this today (it’s only for available for today apparently) and then ship it to me? I will gladly pay your shipping and purchase costs for it (or you can get it for me as a gift 😉 ). Send me an email and I’ll provide you with my address if you’re open.

Anyone who does this for me can then of course ask for any favour in return 🙂

This T-Shirt was build for me. I neeeeeds it!

EDIT: A friend from Facebook agreed to do this for me so there’s no need to volunteer anymore. That was close though as there was only a 2-hour window left when I posted this.  Cheers all. Pics will be forthcoming 🙂

How I spent my afternoon yesterday.

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Reddit convinced me to get Dragon Age legally rather than Pirating it. This is the true story of what followed.

So I get home from work yesterday and get on Reddit…

.

.

Dragon Age FFFUUU

Yes, this really happened to me yesterday exactly as you see it.

Other fun facts

  • I got the VPN yesterday in an attempt to allow myself to buy the goddamn game. Legally. That was a wasted 40 Euros of course but hopefully I’ll be able to use it to watch restricted content. Or you know, maybe not.
  • I didn’t download the whole game at 300Kb/s fortunately. I watched a movie for the first 2 hours which allowed the 1.2 Mb/s to continue. However when the movie finished I tried to surf the net while the last 5% where downloading. Then my speed dropped to 300Kb/s and never got over it, thus making the last 8 minutes into 30.
  • Yes, my PC did really die within 5 minutes of downloading the game. It was the PSU which gave up the ghost. Hopefully nothing else has been affected from it.
  • Of course EA screwed me over by charging the same amount in Euros as they charge in Dollars. Exchange rates be damned.
  • I’ve only managed to see the intro screen of Dragon Age and the first few stages of character creation.

And then people ask why Piracy is the better choice…

The Barefoot Bum strikes back and the ethics of blogging.

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The Barefoot Bum finally reacts to my condemnation of his actions. His response unfortunately falls short of the point.

8 12 09 Bearman Cartoon Freedom of Speech
Image by Bearman2007 via Flickr

…Sort of. In response to my internet drama post about banning me from his blog and my thoughts about it and his past actions he’s come out to clarify his position and why nobody deserves to call him an enemy of free speech or whatever. Of course that would actually be a valid defense if I had claimed that he was an enemy of free speech and open debate. Which, you know, I haven’t.

The Barefoot Bum thus, unwittingly, provides us with a perfect example to talk about blogger ethics and go further on why his actions were objectionable. ((Really, It’s not worth wasting any more bytes explaining how he didn’t understand why I was annoyed at him. My post is quite clear on this even though Larry picked the parts which were the easiest to misrepresent and proceeded to do so.))

He claims that he has no obligation to publish comments or be as nice to commentators and thus implies that shouldn’t be criticized for not doing that. He also claims that he doesn’t object to others criticizing them at their own locations…within a blogpost whining about me criticizing him at my own blog. The Irony is delicious once more.

But what he has failed to grasp is that I’m not criticizing him for being a hypocrite or an enemy of free speech. I’m criticizing him for being an arrogant elitist, for being a dick to people who don’t deserve it and for being hypocritical about being a “a honest seeker of truth” when he dismisses arguments which do not fit into his preconceptions.

His comment policy fits nicely into this picture since it’s a policy which works quite different from the examples he mentions about “no comments”, “no replies from the office”, and “open to all but trolls”. Putting aside the fact that any and all those comment policies can and should be discussed and criticized just as well, his own policy of “comments are heavily moderated and discouraged” is very vague on its guidelines and judging from the examples of what he ends up banning can thus be condemned for the thin excuse for intolerance of different opinions it is. Just because it’s his  policy in his own blog does not allow him to escape this, and this is precisely what I did.

One might ask, as he proceeds to do, why didn’t I do this before? Why I didn’t criticize his comment practices (or his Maoist tendencies) before this drama occurred. The answer is quite simply because I used to consider him an online friend at some point in the past and thus was trying to tactfully point out the errors of his positions without putting it bluntly and thus forcing him on the defensive which would have simply ended up with us speaking past each other. This is only common (n)etiquette between friends and acquaintances really as you’re trying to change the other’s position without breaking up all relations in the meantime. My attempts were especially cautious furthermore as I knew firsthand his intolerance and thus slow. But it was there, in the various counter-arguments I made in his comments and in this blog as well.

Of course, what ended up happening is that the more clearly I started opposing his position, the more annoyed he became at me and the more cold and stressed our interactions became. Still I kept hope that he would be willing to listen to opposing opinions  from someone who’s opinion he used to respect and thus I decided not to come out and condemn him openly until he took the first step to force my hand as I expected him to do, and as he proceeded to do. Instead of thinking why someone he used to read and agree with started arguing against his positions, he took the easier solution to consider that I must have somehow become stupid in the meantime and therefore not worth listening to.

In fact, this etiquette is what Larry seems to be severely lacking and something that he also deserves to be condemned for just as well. His reaction to people who express a different opinion is horrendous. He will accuse them of stupidity or “fucktardery” (to use his own words) at the drop of a hat and thus only manages to discourage and avoid dialogue. Is it no wonder why I consider such knee-jerk reactions counter-productive and do not follow them? And this is precisely the reason I now openly take the time and condemn Larry’s intolerant behavior. Because I wish to discourage it.

I don’t have any illusions that Larry will learn from this of course but he does serve as a great example of how not to act if you’re really looking for truth. Shutting down dialogue, especially when the other side is not being deliberately trollish or aggressive, is not in your interests as a freethinker. Larry may be too far gone with far too thin a skin to save but hopefully the rest of you aren’t.

For closing I am going to address Larry’s contention that he’s not a Maoist because he’s not explicitly said so. A claim so ridiculous on its face that I shouldn’t have to address anyway but I’ll do this just in case one can’t see it. Very much like Socialism or most other political theories do not apply via self-description, so does the opposite hold true as well: The lack of a self-described label does not automatically exclude one from the theory. Larry makes the fallacious reasoning that people are not a “Hitlerites” either simply for being vegetarians nonsmokers, missing the point that those factors do not a Nazi make. However someone who was intolerant to non-Aryan races and homosexuals and also an anti-semite would probably strongly point to Nazi-tendencies. Similarly, the Barefoot Bum’s promotion of governmental communism, his support and apologetics for various Maoist policies, his fawning over Bob Avakian and the RPCUSA and finally his intolerance for opposing opinion in a true Marxist-Leninist fashion, do point out that strong Maoist-tendencies certainly exist in his political orientation, even though he has not explicitly endorsed the whole theory.

If it walks like a duck and it looks like a duck but it hasn’t actually quacked yet to confirm it, you are still warranted to have a very strong suspicion that it is, in fact, a duck.

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The Barefoot Bum is just not interested

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The Barefoot Bum decided the best tactic to counter my criticisms would be to ban me from his blog. This is my parting shot.

And for your daily dose of internet drama…

I’ve been waiting for this to happen for a while and finally now, after the Barefoot Bum re-re-re-…-re-opened his blog I’ve finally been banned from commenting on it in no uncertain terms. He’s “just not interested” in what I have to say. This is after I simply pointed out that his speculations on the historical rise of capitalism are off-base as he misrepresents a lot of historical factors such as subsistence farming or the causation for wage-labour and thus may/will reach the wrong conclusions.

I was implicitly threatened with a ban if I did not “provide evidence” to counter his lack of evidence and then my subsequent comments providing some sources and explaining in direct terms that he cannot assert something and then demand evidence to disprove it, were deleted (or left unapproved more likely). Shortly after, I was informed via email that my input was not appreciated.

And this pissed me off.

Why did the random email from some random blogger piss me off? Because for good or bad I’ve had a friendly history with this particular blogger and in my dismay I’ve watched him descent more and more into intolerance and elitism as time went on. I’ve seen him ban friends, foes or simply well-meaning people for uttering words of criticism with the laughable excuse that they’re not “a honest seeker of truth”. I’ve seen him deliberately crap on my efforts to help him and did not even get as much back as a consistent apology (only some half-arsed mumblings about “Technical issues”). Back then I did not express publicly my annoyance at the way he treated me as I was willing to give him the benefit of a doubt on behalf of our friendly history, but enough is enough.

The Barefoot Bum has become the example of a blogger you want to avoid.

And it’s sad, you know? He was the type of blogger that I enjoyed linking people to and asking for his input for my own ideas. He has the type of sharp thinking that can accurately criticize socioeconomic issues such as the capitalist mode of production and reach some interesting and digestible conclusions. But his growing intolerance to simply being wrong is just off the fucking scale. Oh he’s just wonderful when he’s arguing against theism where he knows he’s right. I’ve seen him accept the most rampart hostility from theists with a chuckle, but don’t you dare challenge his nascent political beliefs and especially don’t you dare challenge them from a socialist perspective. Or he’ll shut down his blog!..Again.

Did I mention I’m pissed? Just in case you forgot.

For someone who prides in his “honest search for truth”, TBB is ridiculously closed to listening to constructive criticism or facts which go against his ideology. And don’t you dare do so in his blog without evidence he’ll agree on. His comments are just for praises after all. And you have something critical to say, you’d better post it where he can safely ignore it (i.e. your own blog) and continue as if no objections have been made to his errors and distortions.

And you know what the funny thing is? This change of character happens to correlate very nicely with his turn towards Maoism of all things! It’s like a perfect example of how flawed ideologies lead to flawed results, not only in practice but apparently in character as well. The more he started getting turning towards authoritarianism and “glorious leadership” as valid sociopolitical concepts, the more his own character started representing the nasty effects these concepts breed. It’s like a practical example of how character corrupting these ideologies are.

In any case, there’s nothing left to salvage here. This bridge is well and truly burnt and not worth rebuilding without some big changes. I do hope to be proven wrong and see Larry rethink his position and actually start hunting for truth with an open mind once more, but I don’t bet on it at this point. It is also probably time to also unsubscribe from his blog as there’s no point in reading analysis starting from flawed premises from an author who stubbornly refuses to consider this possibility.

Goodbye Barefoot Bum. I’m certain you’ll sleep better with the knowledge that your ban earned you a prominent place along with Objectivists and liars. I wash my hands of you.

UPDATE: Hey look, he’s just noticed this post and his response was his usual arrogant bullshit avoiding any substance. No, much easier to call me unintelligent and declare I’m not worth arguing with. I guess only stupid people can possibly disagree with the Barefoot Bum since everyone who does is labelled as such. As for Maoism, well, read his latest posts and make your own conclusions.

In which I try to clarify LibCom for Stefan Molyneux

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I’ve just finished talking in an online Anarcho-Capitalist talk-show. Unfortunately, while I was there after the host requested clarification, I came away disappointed.

really really free market!
Image by Shira Golding via Flickr

Last week in a video from Freedomain Radio was posted in /r/Anarchism with the notice that its host, Stefan Molyneux – apparently an “Anarcho”-Capitalist of some renown – was honestly curious about some aspects of Social Anarchism, such an Anarcho-Communism or Anarcho-Syndicalism,  and wished that “someone competent” from that movement call him to clarify some of his contentions.

Although the fact that he didn’t understand some aspects about this very popular movement and for some reason couldn’t find out sources of clarification (although a wealth of information is at best, one internet search away) was immediately suspect, I decided to take him up on this “challenge” (Yes I do understand it wasn’t a formal challenge, I’m just using this word for lack of a proper alternative).

After some fiddling with the way to call-in ((Blogradio’s builtin call-in feature sucks in GNU/Linux. I don’t know why this is so but calling via it, the voice reaches me as if in slow-motion. /rant)) I’ve finally settled to using Skype to call their landline number and soon it was my turn to speak. You can find the discussion here starting at 22:30 (I’ll post the Youtube vid when Stefan uploads it). I’m not nearly as glib as Stefan and thus you have to suffer through my thick accent and “umm”s as I’m trying to make my point (although hearing my playback, I don’t think I was as muffled as he claimed). Which is incidentally why I have not made any videos 😉

Unfortunately I must say that I was disappointed in the end. While Stefan proclaims his wish to understand the Social Anarchist movement, I got away with the impression that this is simple rhetoric to appear open-minded. I didn’t get the feeling that he was trying to clarify points he was not sure of, but rather throwing various concepts at me in an attempt to trip me up so that he can take over and proceed to claim intellectual superiority, as you will find out he did.

The points we discussed in rapid succession were:

  • Does LibCom discard Property Rights?
  • How can a society progress from Primitivism to LibCom?
  • How does  new industry get created?
  • How would a future LibCom society work?
  • How would you proceed to a future LibCom society?

Now each of these points, especially the last two, takes some explaining and I could only give the vaguest framework in all of the ~15 minutes I was on the phone (of which I spoke for about 7 at best). In the last one especially, arguably the most detailed and important part of Anarchist thought, I was given the whole of 1 minute before being abruptly cut-off mid sentence.

But what irked me most is that after being cut-off Stefan proceeded in a long-winded monologue in which he assumed ignorance of my part of what a LibCom society would look like and proceeded to claim superiority and attack my presumed ignorance of both the details of the future and of how Free Markets really work.

Needless to say he didn’t make any arguments I couldn’t counter, only that I didn’t get a chance. In fact, I found out this way of kicking off your caller and then making a closing statement without allowing a rebuke as a low trick which doesn’t really raise my perception of Stefan a lot. If he really didn’t have enough time for me, then just leave it at that. Don’t silence your opponent so that your argument goes unchallenged.

So here I’m also going to take the opportunity to address what Stefan said after I was disconnected:

1. You need to think in some detail.

Here Stefan made the assumption that I didn’t have any details on my ideas other than some vague concept of “Strikes and so on”. This is in fact quite far from the truth and such an impression was only given due to the short amount of time I was given to express them and the constant switching of subjects which was not allowing me to elaborate more on any one of them. Anarchists have about 150 years of political theory and needless to say that everything that needs it, has been described in as much detail as possible. Further than that, we also have around 100 years of actual, practical experience in social struggle and revolution which the theories have taken into account and been modified accordingly (which is the reason for example why social anarchists reject reformist tactics).

On the opposite side, AnCaps have at best 60 years of theorizing about a future Utopia of free markets and absolutely no idea how to get there. Stefan boasted about his 1 year of thinking about this, which is practically nothing in the larger picture of things. And this is why I was trying to explain that it’s not worth spending so much time visualizing the perfect AnCap world, when you don’t have the progression tackled first.

2. You need to work within the system before you criticize it.

The gist of this argument was basically that unless one is an enepreneur or capitalist, they don’t understand the system and thus they should refrain from criticizing it. Here Stefan considers that since his experiences in this have convinced him of the superiority of the Free Markets, then it’s obvious that someone who criticizes them must not have enough experience to make an educated criticism.

Of course he realized the trap he put himself into, when he admitted that he could also be called on criticizing the government while not being a politician. He attempted to get out of this by claiming he has enough experience in working with the govt and being educated by them that he can now make an accurate criticism. However he misses the point that Anarchist and all other critics of the Capitalist system have as much of “peripheral” experience of the Capitalist system and the markets as he has of the State. We too have worked for Entepreneurs. We too have had to suffer “market discipline”. We too have been educated and propagandized ad infinitum by a system which treats Capitalism as the natural state of affairs. The indoctrination towards this is as big, if not bigger than the indoctrination towards Statism.

And thus Stefan’s contention can be turned back upon him. If he wished to support the system, he should try becoming a wage-slave on a third world country to see how privileged he is currently. Or he should take an unskilled job at a MacPosition  to see how superior the entepreneurs and bosses really are. There’s lots of experiences that Stefan has not lived in order to judge Capitalism as a good system, Experiences which the Anarchists and other Socialists have lived through, which is incidentally why the movement was started: From experiencing the true nature of the system as the majority of the world does rather than the privileged few.

He also did a grave mistake of pointing out programming and web developing as an example of the free market (that one should experience). A mistake that undermines his own position as an “Anarcho”-Capitalist. You see the environment he works in, is a peculiar one because it differs from a capitalist system in some very important variables. The most important one, is that the workers own the means of production. Programming languages are free. Web Servers are free. Replication is free. The only cost one has to start their own business online is the small cost to get a hosting plan, and most often than not, not even that ((All because of Free Software naturally))!

As such, to point to the internet as a free market paradise is to concede that a truly free market can only work via Socialism, much like Mutualists have been claiming for ages. In fact, what Stefan sees and is inspired of, is the kind of thing Tucker was seeing in the 19th century, when the land was free and people could start their own homestead or business at very small upfront cost and retain it. However, this is not Capitalism, as much as Molyneux would like to redefine it. Not only that, but actual Capitalism constricts such a development as it is inherently destabilizing to it. It happened in Tucker’s age and it is also happening ((or at least, the Powers That Be are working towards it. See Patents, Copyrights, Net Neutrality etc)) now in the internet.

In closing, I came out of this discussion disillusioned. For all of Stefan’s proclaimed wish to understand and speak with the other side, it seems to me that he only wishes to score some easy points with his internet audience. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have been so eager to kick me off his show with vague suggestions of a one-on-one talk without even bothering to learn who I am! It seems to me that instead of actually understanding what I said, he was all to eager to misrepresent Social Anarchism and cover that by continuously repeating his “wish to understand.”

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Reddit (sorta) censors Atheism

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The Atheism subreddit has been deliberately excluded from appearing on the front page and the default choices for Reddit. Unfortunately, the excuses given don’t convince.

How the Reddit bar looks like after the change in the algorithm
How the Reddit bar looks like after the change in the algorithm

Well, this is disappointing. It seems that Reddit has decided to practically hide the Atheism subreddit from public view. I may be posting late about this, since other have already started covering this controversy, but I might as well throw my two cents for all it’s worth.

Initially I noticed this yesterday night when rumors of this started popping up all over atheism. Initially it looked like a conspiracy theory but very soon the facts of the matter started coming up through investigation by redditors. Soon after, as the facts could not be denied anymore, an official explanation was posted. Needless to say, it failed to convince.

As other noticed as well, the argument is pretty weak. The reddit admins don’t think that Atheism is legitimately on the top and thus instead of fixing their algorithms, they decided to hide it instead. Now except from the fact that this looks very much like a quickly cooked up explanation, it does also raise the question of why this impression was had by the admins. The official take is that the Atheism reddit is not really so popular because of its controversy it rises to the top unfairly”. Which immediately raises the question “Why is this unfair? Why is the old algorithm deemed wrong just because it managed to reward controversial reddits with more popularity?”.

I don’t think an easy answer can be given to this, as it will be simply based on the developer’s perspective, which then as others pointed out as well, makes it a de-facto censorship. If the developers don’t believe that Atheism deserves to be on the top, then any way they modify the algorithm for choosing the top reddits will be deemed bad unless it can push Atheism down. That is, the measure of success depends on /r/Atheism not being on the top!

Nevertheless, although we can speculate on the developer’s motives, a charitable interpretation demands that we consider that it is, in fact, their site and their design, and as such they get to decide what makes a good algorithm. However there are still some unanswered questions.

First a modification is exactly what has happened. The algorithm was modified accordingly and Atheism was pushed down to the 16th position. However the deliberate exclusion of Atheism from the front page and from the top-bar selection of subreddits (visible to unsubscribed users) is still a concern as it points to the possibility that Atheism is still being deliberately excluded even when the algorithm puts it outside the front page. If the concern was simply about the trolling going on when an article from Atheism hit the front page, then why is this necessary?

Personally, even though I am not a big fan of /r/Atheism, mostly because my sentiments on it are similar to this guy, and even though I consider the whole ordeal a tad overblown, I have still removed reddit from my adblock whitelist as a minor sign of protest and I’ve messaged the admins with my disappointment of their handling of this situation.

I believe things would have been far better if the admins had posted in the subreddit with the problem they face, why this is, what they were thinking of doing and asking for feedback. They would then have immediately seen the feelings of the community, how popular or not it would be and most certain of all, they would have avoided all this controversy and negativity which is the explicit result of them changing things under the table without telling anyone.

Such an act starts to raise questions about motives and honesty on the part of the reddit admins, something which can be lethal to a site which is practically run by their community and thus based on the community’s explicit trust that they are not being manipulated for commercial or political purposes. Signs of underhanded tactics like this, done without informing anyone harm this and as such harm reddit itself. Which other reddits are being hidden under the table? Which other opinions are not considered “popular” enough to deserve the spotlight as already implemented? Will the algorithm be modified again if a marginal reddit like Anarchism suddenly rises in popularity and ideas the owners don’t espouse start being promoted to the front? Probably not, but the acts of the admins have put such uncomfortable questions on the table.

This is in fact a great sample to show how authoritarian decisions by those who are considered an enlightened minority (ie those who are assumed to know what is best for everyone) can diverge with a very considerable number of those they are deciding for. The backlash is only so large in reddit (as opposed to dictatorships or republics) because of its democratic nature and community participation but the same rules apply to all such authoritarian decisions. Most, if not all of this would have been avoided if the decision had been taken with the participation of the community they decide for. Not only that, but the solution implemented would have possibly been far better.

As it is now, I can only hope that the reddit admins have learned a lesson, even though their current actions don’t point to that direction. At best, next time they decide to modify their code with such an explicit purpose in mind they will inform and consult with the communities affected. At worst they will keep in mind that doing such acts in secret can backfire and possibly invoke the Streisand Effect.

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Preparing for a long-time-coming upgrade

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After squashing a showstopping bug, I’m finally ready to upgrade my theme to the newest version and hopefully jump start its development, on my own if necessary.

The Keyboard Parade
Image by theopie via Flickr

I’m finally preparing to upgrade my theme to the latest version (ie the next part in my ongoing attempts to upgrade) as I really should finally start using wordpress widgets. Unfortunately the theme seems to be unmaintained at the moment and the author MIA since April this year. Also the theme still hasn’t been moved to the shiny new official WordPress repository which tells me that Nalin must have lost all interest in it.

Hopefully I’m wrong. I’ve sent him an email and left a forum post asking to add to the repository and allow me to pickup the maintenance if he’s not interested anymore. If he doesn’t come back to me, I’ll unfortunately have to fork it in order to make it compatible with newer version of WordPress and to merge the changes I’ve made into it for others to use. We’ll see.

Some of the things I’m planning to add/modify are

  • Support for the new way of styling so that it works properly with Zemanta and builtin alignments.
  • Option to enable drop-down menus for the header (as you see above) through suckerfish and possibly superfish in the future.
  • More options to tweak.
  • Widgetize the single-post sidebar to allow some content in the generally empty area on the left.
  • Hardcoded support for the various plugins I’m currently using. So for example, if you install emo-vote, there code will already be in your theme to activate it but nothing will be visible if the plugin is missing. I will probably add support for tweaking these plugins in the options page as well.

And that’s for starters. Fortunately I see that the community around this theme is still alive so I’m guessing I’ll be getting more ideas for addition from there as well.

I’m still running my old theme since I managed to debug the suckerfish issue a few minutes before I left for work today, but now that my biggest hurdle is resolved, I’ll soon my changing into “fresh clothes” so to speak.

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Interoperability my arse!

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Microsoft once again shows that their anti-competitive colours are still flying. Only now we have to deal with appeasers from the GNU/Linux side trying to apologize for them as well.

Windows XP Running On Linux
Image by paradoxperfect via Flickr

Roy says it best about the new Windows 7 installation. Once more, for all their rhetoric, Microsoft’s actions show yet again that they don’t care about interoperability or playing nice with anyone else. All they care is maintaining their desktop monopoly and part of that tactic is not making it easy at all to setup a dual boot setup.

While in 2001, when XP came out the excuse “Only hardcore geeks use GNU/Linux so why should MS even consider them” might have had some basis, 8 years later, when desktop GNU/Linux is more than viable through distros like Ubuntu and where it is quite likely that people might consider trying this other OS while wanting to keep the Windows option open, it fails to convince.

This is nothing other than the same ol’ spiteful, monopolistic tactics on behalf of MS. This capability, to install multiple OS’ without screwing up each other has existed for ages so it’s obviously not rocket science. As such, MS’ refusal to implement it can be nothing but deliberate.

And if that’s not enough, we now have GNU/Linux users defending such actions! So now, among the atheist appeasers, Women “feminist” appeasers we have to add GNU/Linux appeasers as well. If Microsoft apologists were not enough. Of course, that there are those who would sell-out to MS in order to get ahead in the marketplace is nothing new, but plain users? Those who are the ones getting the most annoyance out of such tactics? Why do they feel the need to apologise  for MS?!

Here’s some of the classic excuses (and my counter) you’ll see on why this isn’t really a problem, move along, nothing to see here:

GNU/Linux users are a small minority. Most desktops will be Windows only so why should MS even implement a dual-boot consideration?

Because even though GNU/Linux is small, it is also showing accelerating growth and even a small percentage of desktop users, when seen on a global scale means quite a few million people. People who will all be inconvenienced when they need to upgrade their installation or repair/reinstall it when it will (eventually) break down.

Because MS has been blabbing about “interoperability” for the last few years and they need to be called on their bullshit at some point. Their rhetoric has never been honest and their actions prove it again and again.

They didn’t really make it hard to install Windows 7. It could have been far worse.

Gee thanks…

Should  we be thankful that Microsoft doesn’t go out of their way to prevent GNU/Linux installations now? Should we praise MS for not making our task more difficult than it already is? What kind of fucking stupid slave-mentality is this? “Golly thanks for using lube while screwing me in the ass, sir!”

And you know what? They did make it harder than Windows XP. Slightly so but nevertheless true.

You don’t stop criticizing someone when they act less evil than they could have been. You stop criticizing people and corporations when they stop being evil.

Pfah!

All you need to do is hack , #2 and #3.

Which is obviously something all people who’d like to try out the system can do right? No, of course not. And MS knows this and they know it will further reinforce the perception that GNU/Linux is only for hardcore geeks. You know what the regular user will say when you mention hacking the goddamn boot loader? “Huh wut? No thanks”. Which will mean that it will always require a power user (and perhaps more than that) to simply set it up (and then again and again when Windows invariably breaks down and requires reinstallation).

Compared to the possible scenario where Windows acted like an OS of its generation and recognised that “hey, there are other OS’ out there, perhaps we should be considerate to those of our users who might be dual-booting”, and have Windows autorecognise the MBR is taken, and provide sensible options on how to work with it that a simple user can follow, you know, like GNU/Linux has been doing for what, 8 years now?

Of course it is better to make it seem as if only IT nerds can setup and maintain a GNU/Linux installation alongside Windows 7, even when they difficulty has nothing to do with GNU/Linux and everything to do with MS’ refusal to play fair. Thus they can keep their ignorant audience locked in and happily continue spreading their FUD, only they have some appeasers from the GNU/Linux camp on their side as well who will make their point for them by saying stuff like “Oh it’s easy. Just reinstall Grub and then hack the bootloader“.

Other OS’ and even some particular GNU/Linux distros are worse than that.

A Tu Quoque is a logical fallacy. If other OS’ are doing even worse, then they are worthy of even heavier condemnation. And about those GNU/Linux distros that do it (see Moblin, IPCop etc), you do know they are meant for a single OS installation right? You do know that Moblin is for netbooks which are unlikely to have a dual-boot while IpCop is a firewall right? Don’t you think it’s just a tad intellectually dishonest to bring those up as examples of such faults?

You wouldn’t would you?

So while there can be other who can be just as bad, if not worse than MS, this does not constitute an excuse of any kind, especially since they hold most of the desktop market and their actions are clearly deliberate. And if Free Software OS’ are doing this without having a reason to do so, then you can always change it by contributing or even convincing the developers of the errors of their ways.

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