I just noticed a weird google query coming to my site
post a new comment site:dbzer0.com
Which leads me to believe that someone cannot comment here.
Whoever you are, if you’re having troubles leaving a comment, send me a mail or contact my comment provider’s support to inform them. I’m currently testing their beta plugin and perhaps this is causing you problems.
Currently the comment form uses Javascript and you should also have the old WordPress comments available if your javascript is disabled. I also activated a new anti-spam plugin today to help out with the spam (it has already blocked 50 of ’em since the afternoon) so there is a chance this is causing you problems.
Why do we have to beg the software companies to provide the functionality when we can take our fate into our own hands?
Image by Dave Smith via Flickr
There is a frustrating phenomenon that I notice amongst many technology enthusiasts and general users, the conditioning to pathetically expect new progress from the software companies. All too often I see someone claiming to be a fan, asking, pleading, begging, wishing, warning or even threatening any software company so that they would implement a feature that they wish for.
This is the mentality of a slave. It shows that one is happy simply wait for the enlightened elite to provide them with what they believe they need. The only difference exists in how much that elite listen to their “peasants'” voices. You have many web2.0 companies which are very open to their community and you have others which are so absolutely haughty and elite that what they give you, they expect you to like.
But why do people willingly put themselves in this situation? I guess it is it they do not wish to trouble themselves too much. All that a software company requires of them is their continuous supply of money (or presence & support, in the case of web2.0 ones) and they promise to take care of everything you ever wished for. You just rest your little heads..
One wonders, would these same people willingly put themselves under “socialist” dictatorship? If not, why? Doesn’t that work in the same way as any of those software companies? Wouldn’t these dictators work with your own best interests in mind, if only you gave them your money? Wouldn’t it be possible to even modify their actions if you begged, pleased, warned or threatened enough?
‘Aha’ you will say ‘But I can at any point switch software with ease. I can vote with my wallet I can! If those companies don’t listen to my wishes I can just choose another piece of software instead. I don’t need them, they need me!’
So tell me, are you truly free, when all you have is a freedom to choose between masters? Won’t any other company be like this as well? Perhaps a bit more “consoling” to your betrayed soul, but ultimately the same? Would you be any more free if you could at any point leave your “socialist” dictatorship if there were only more of them to select from?
And what if there isn’t anywhere to go to? What if your continued support all these years has made that dictatorship so big that it has swallowed all others and now it’s either that, go live alone or start your own little commune and have only the bare basics compared to what you had before?
And what if they won’t even let you leave? What if the borders are closed and your property simply licensed to you? What if the only way to leave an oppressive dictatorship like that is to simply discard all your earthly belongings and simply leave with just the clothes on your back?
But this is what a propriertary software will try to do. Either it will be so unique that you simply cannot chose something else and you must continue paying like a good little worker or They will not let you take anything with you because of closed formats and the like.
Until Open Office came around, what alternative was there if one wished to move away from MS Office, say because it lacked a certain feature and MS refused to implement it or because it was simply too expensive?
When you leave facebook, can you take anything with you?
Can’t Google cancel your account at any point, without having to give you any excuse or letting you take anything back?
Isn’t Photoshop basically your only option as a professional graphic designer?
It is especially worrying to see people not only gladly place their own shackles but to excitedly support some of the most oppressive companies ever. Apple and its fanboys are the one that perplex me the most. There is truly here a cult of personality the kind of which any fascism regime would be proud off. The supporters will blindly trust in the wisdom of Jobs and Apple and buy and swallow any junk they throw their way, as if it were nectar. The fact that their shackles are the strongest and most numerous of them all does not matter, simply because they are also the most shiny.
But what are the alternatives? Well, like any dictatorship has its antonym in free democracy, so does proprietary software has it’s antonym in Free/Libre Software.
Do you remember my example of that little group of people who wished to escape from the dictatorship they lived under? They did. They did leave everything behind and went on to create their own little community. But they were wise, for they knew that it was only a matter of time until their society ended up like the one they fled from.
Thus, they created a constitution, a manifesto, call it what you like, which prevented them and their successors from doing just that.
That manifesto was the GNU General Public License and while they started only with their hands and the clothes on their back, their little community grew and prospered and started to draw freedom-loving people who fled from proprietary dictatorships all over the world.
Whereas a software company decides what you will have with varying degrees of input from you, the GPL community does not decide at all. Any member can have what he wants, provided that they work to get it. It is simply not possible to stop anyone from making the software do what he wants if he really wants it, unlike a proprietary software which you cannot change unless allowed to (through begging, asking, pleading etc).
Is this a harder road? Most definitely. But it is the only road that preserves your freedom. And nobody ever said that freedom is easy. Quite the contrary, freedom has always required hard work and struggle to sustain from the people comprising. From the bottom-up. But the fruits of it are always much sweeter.
The only thing you get easy, from people who make all the choices for you, is simply the illusion of freedom. And this is exactly what you get with proprietary software. And even that goes away eventually.
It is my impression that the Free Software movement has one of the best recipes for Socialism. Perhaps we can apply it to real life somehow.
Image by redtux2000 via Flickr
Socialism is a very difficult thing to achieve. Up until now there have been two attempted paths towards reaching that goal: Revolution and Reformism. Neither has succeeded. The first path (usually) fell victim to counter-revolution and nowadays lacks enough traction in its necessary base, the working class. The second path always gets corrupted and sidetracked too much and simply ends up perpetuating the status quo while keeping the name.
There is however one method which not only has not been attempted yet but also shows considerable promise of success. The peer-organised, distributed, lead-by-example method of Free Software.
For those not familiar with the history of the Free Software movement, the basic thing you need to be aware of is that it was initiated in a completely hostile environment (of propriertary software), without any help “from-above”. It was simply based on a simple ruleset that ensured that the fruits of this effort would not be corrupted or misappropriated and thus lead to fragmentation. The GPL.
Thus, there was no need for leaders ((While there are some recognisable figures in the movement, they are no more leaders than Marx or Engels were)) or sponsors.
This result-oriented method has been a tremendous and monumental success. From an obscure hacker’s hobby in universities and basements, in 20 short years it has become a force to be reckoned with, respected and supported by major software players while still ensuring that they cannot abuse it for their own ends.
I believe there is here a method that not only has not yet been attempted but perhaps might be the key to finally breaking the stranglehold of Capitalism.
The method is simply to work within the system. Show people how much better Socialism can work and then, once they have given it a try for practical reasons, introduce them to the ideology behind it.
Now do not be alarmed. I am not talking about reformism but about subversion. Let me explain:
The Free Software movement is based on Copyright law. It gains power and utility by using the same system it was created to oppose! How does it achieve this? By placing additional terms and restrictions on its supporters in order to ensure that the effort they put towards the movement will always remain with the movement and not leave with them. Like a Judo master, it uses the considerable power of the system to defeat it.
Supporters come because the development method of Open Source is simply superior, it is easy to join, progressive and free. Then, not all of them, but a sufficient amount get to hear about the philosophy behind it, adopt it and continue spreading it. And guess what. It not only worked but this socialistic culture has spread outside of Software (See Wikipedia, Creative Commons etc).
To put things into perspective, lets see how the current two paths to Socialism would have worked when attempting to achieve a Free Software world.
Revolution: The Software developers would forcibly or simply arbitrarily take the source code of the programs they had been hired to write and distribute it to their peers. This would of course trigger a “counter-revolution” where the software bourgeois would attempt to stop such a unaccepted distribution.
Reformism: The Software developers would attempt to become company executives or shareholders with the purpose in mind to liberate the source code to their peers when they had enough power. Unfortunately, not only power corrupts but the people in charge would never allow one who is incorruptible to achieve power.
Not only would it have been extremely difficult for either of these methods to succeed (as has been the case with similar Socialist movements) but without having a GPL to back them up, simply releasing the source into public domain would allow the effort to be subverted by the remaining active forces, thereby giving them a competitive advantage over our (alternative universe) free software movement.
I hope you’re still with me.
So how can socialism use a similar method? How about working within Capitalism? Here’s a rough idea
Create a constitution of similar ideals to the GPL that is a legally binding contract. The whole point of this constitution would be to prevent the labour put into Socialism to be turned against it. For example, have the clause that once a person becomes a member, he agrees to redirect all wealth acquired as a member back to the group. He retains previous wealth (so if at any point he decides to leave, he can be as when he first joined). Thus while a member, he eschews private property.
Create a commune based on this constitution. People joining this commune will have their future acquired wealth redirected back to this commune which should then ensure that individual members have a much higher standard of living on the bottom end than any other system. If the commune has rules such a direct democracy and the like, based on Socialist ideology, it should also ensure that it is not corrupted.
Because of the superior bottom level of the commune, more people living in the bottom end of the current society will wish to join. Such individuals can easily then be monitored to make sure that they follow the constitution and rules and slowly bring them into the ideology so that they follow the rules on their own volition.
To preserve direct democracy, Communes that become too large should be able to split and create smaller ones. A clause in the constitution could be that any number of people can leave the commune with a direct percentage of the current wealth provided they create a new commune under the same constitution. Thus the number of people living in such communes could increase without necessitating the formation of a state system within.
Slowly, though such a system more and more communes would form until it becomes the obvious choice for the proletariat to belong in one for their own security. People could still choose to stay outside, but they would be at a competitive disadvantage. Once these communes start owning enterprises and reap their own surplus value, they will be capable of stealing the lifeblood of Capitalism. Labour.
Of course, back then I was still using the simple alias: Historian, instead of my current and ultimately more kewl Db0. Back then I didn’t blog (very few did anyway) nor was I insterested so much in philosophy and stuff. I was generally into Counterstrike in the first internet clan of Greece 🙂
Unfortunately the Division by Zer0 did not exist back then but surprisingly someone had purchased the domain (I knew that already) for use in some lame DBZ site.
I’ve been struggling today to manage to make Backlinks to use the Scriptaculous script library in order to have the list of backlinks hidden until the viewer chooses to see them. While in the Division by Zer0 I already have those libraries loaded for my navigation, it’s certain that not everyone who is going to use it does the same.
Initially I was thinking of simply asking everyone to use a plugin loading these libraries as a dependency but that’s simply over the top for something this simple. Instead I decided to find out how to load the script within the plugin and to my delight I found out that not only does wordpress has functions explicitly for this purpose, but it already includes most common javascript libraries, inclusing Scriptaculous.
Unfortunately, although there were a number of guides trying to explain how to use this, none of them was complete. Simply adding enqueue_script in my function didn’t work and I couldn’t see a full example.
Fortunately someone had thought to add a mailing list discussion which gave me the solution after a few pages. I need to use the template_redirect hook (wp_head is not good, I tried) and I need to put that at the very start of my plugin, after the information but before any function begins. It then needs to call a function which enqueues the scriptaculous effects of which “blind” is used by Backlinks
The end result looks like this
add_action('template_redirect', 'addeffects');
function addeffects() {
if (function_exists('wp_enqueue_script')) wp_enqueue_script('scriptaculous-effects');
}
Of course, the name of the function can be anything you like and you can call any javascript library you wish instead of scriptaculous-effects. Feel free to download the whole plugin to see the whole code.
I just created a new plugin which allows you to display backlinks for your posts similar to the way it exists in Blogger. It is called, appropriately Backlinks.
If you do not like that wordpress does not display links coming from blogs that utilize trackbacks, or if you simply want a simply list of incoming links (instead of having them scattered in your comments), this is for you.
If it still in the very first version so it is quite basic. I plan in the future that have a configuration page, the ability to hide or display the links (just in case the list gets too long) though scriptalicious etc. For the moment you can simply put it anywhere in a template and it will automatically show you blogs linking there.
Let me know what you think or if you have any ideas that might make it better.
UPDATE: I’ve now managed to get the plugin to hide the results until the header/link is clicked. This will save people with a lot of incoming links from having a huge list in the middle.
To my dismay in recent weeks I’ve noticed that I’m not receiving any trackbacks or pingbacks anymore. This was especially annoying as it happened right on the time I posted the Carnival of the Godless and received approximately 17 linkbacks (of which about 5 must have included proper pingbacks, blogger as always sucks in that regard).
So after getting annoyed enough, I’ve managed to discover the perpetrator of these disappearances. It seems for some reason the BcSpamBlock plugin was just chewing everything up without letting anyone know. I disabled it and the problem went away.
I think this may have to do something with relation to Dreamhost as if it happened to everyone, everywhere, surely someone might have noticed sooner. Nevertheless, if you’re missing pingbacks, at least you have an idea where to look.
Unfortunately all the ones I should have gotten by now are lost forever…unless the good people who linked to me make the trouble to do it manually again 😉
Now you have the ability to show all the posts of your domain which have been submitted to reddit and sort them by the best. That way new visitors have a quick way to find out what is best to read first.
Along with things like AideRSS’s top posts widget (mine you can see on the top slidebar) you can put your best content, by popular vote, to the forefront. Unfortunately AideRSS does not update as soon as I’d like so it’s good to have the alternative of reddit.
Another good addition from reddit is that you can now customise the colour of your buttons. Finally I can add it to my own webpage and have it fit. This is my classic problem with widgets in that they never fit my dark colour scheme. The Alien needs some antialiasing work I think but generally it looks good.
To tell the truth, I really wanted to the button to be on the botton right of the post so that people can use the buttons once they’re finished reading the article but there was no realistic way to do it. Putting the button after the content meant that it fell next to the similar posts and bunched them up (which I didn’t like). Using the css “position” property I could move it a couple of dozen pixels upwards to have it within the content but unfortunately the word-wrapping did not follow it and thus it just ended up obscuting the text.
If anyone has any idea on how to achieve this without having to manually put code in the content each time I’d love to hear it.
Ah, I forgot to mention that you can also put something nice in your sidebar to show others what you liked
Enjoy 😉
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