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Sunday July 27, 2008

Is Qantas on a trajectory for diaster?

On Saturday the 26th of July, 2008, a Qantas plane experienced rapid decompression and was forced to descend to 10,000' before an emergency landing at Manilla. When this was first announced, there was speculation of whether it was a bomb, was it bad maintenance or just metal fatigue. While some comments on the Internet have talked about things being "blow upwards" into the passenger area, that doesn't mesh with the reports I've read. However it was somewhat scary to read that the oxygen masks failed to work as they should...but perhaps, just perhaps, this fits in with later comments...

In Australia, the union that the people who work on the planes belong to was quick to bring up the question of whether or not it was cheap overseas labor that could be blamed. Unfortunately not so. The plane's recent service history points to all work being done at home.

Today another article appeared, mentioning that Qantas has been asked to inspect all of the oxygen bottles on all of its aircraft. The reason why: those very bottles are normally located very close to where the hole appeared on QF30. Oops. Wonder if the bottles were a bit old?

Whilst perusing averald.com, I came across another report that details an incident in February 2007 involving a Qantas plane:

• Report: Qantas B743 near Melbourne on Feb 4th 2007, engine shut down in flight

- in summary, Qantas changed its procedures in a manner that introduced a risk that led to a problem, specifically:

• A recent revision to the company refuelling procedures had extended the time between the required fuel water drain checks. (Safety issue)

Now to me that looks like the type of change you would implement to cut down on your operational (maintainance) costs, correct?

How many other changes has Qantas made, in recent years, that are similar in nature to this that have the potential for introducing a failure that leads to catasrophe? And is the QF30 flight another symptom of this kind of change?

Sounds to me like there are some...direct and possibly embaressing questions that need to be put to Qantas...

In a further update to this incident, oxygen bottle fragments have been found suggesting that indeed one of the oxygen bottles did explode, leaving the question how and why.

Friday July 18, 2008

The changing face of the FSF

When I first started out using the Internet, there was a small collection of machines at MIT where anyone could login as a guest to compile and run software. These were the part of the GNU project. It was free access to machines and disk space that you might not otherwise have, at the time. This was circa 1990 - before the WWW - and the most common method for downloading software, at that time, was via ftp. Some people would buy CDs of free software because it was cheaper/quicker/easier than downloading 600-700MB on a tail of the Internet, by modem.

Almost 20 years later and the default interaction with the FSF and GNU project is via the web. And what a difference it is. Today when I go to a web page to try and download free software from www.gnu.org it is all Donate to the FSF or Buy our distribution. Oh dear. I'm sure if I point my browser at an ftp URL, I won't be plagued with such nonsense, but the fact remains that the focus of the FSF and its GNU project has visibly changed from being a conduit for free software to give us money. To see what I mean, visit http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html and read down to the How to get GNU software. Buy or download and please donate. Sounds more like shareware than freeware.

What used to be about free software now appears to be about commercial software. What used to be about people donating their time to something they love doing now seems to be about employment.

It is somewhat ironic that in the past, the mantra of FSF/GNU was that software should be free and you shouldn't have to pay for it - programmers who work on it would have other real jobs. It would seem that the FSF/GNU have had a rather substantial change of heart, given the blatant self advertising (for money) their web pages now do.

One might be lead to believe that perhaps the success of GNU software has now lead to the project becoming corrupted by its success: everywhere out there people are using GNU software to make money, so why shouldn't the project itself get some of that reward?

How long then, until the FSF becomes a part of or itself a for-profit organisation?

Thursday July 17, 2008

GPLv4 anyone?

First, I should state that I am not a lawyer and nor have I any training or schooling in law.

Over on one of the NetBSD mailing lists for its users, netbsd-users, someone from outside posted an email declaring that they were creating GPLv4 such that it was more compatible with using software freely. The initial email CC'd lots of interesting parties. As one might expect, RMS chimed in with the predictable response.

This made me stop and think. Why can't someone call something they create the GNU GPL? Or more to the point, is there anything stopping me from creating a document and calling that GPLv4? I summarised these questions in a followup email to Richard's reply, to which there is no response yet.

For the sake of curiousity, I went and had a look at the section of the license that allows you to upgrade to another version. It reads like this:

    This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

This paragraph is interesting on a couple of grounds:

• 1. The use of "the License" could possibly be argued to be ambiguous as nowhere in the document itself is the term "the License" defined. It is common in legal documents to see something like this: ...the GNU General Public License (hereafter referered to as "the License")... or even to define the term "License" in a similar fashion to the manner in which Program and others are defined much higher up in the document.
• 2. The reference to "any later version" is again potentially ambiguous. Do all GNU General Public Licenses have to have from the FSF? Why can't I write my own GNU General Public License? Furthermore, this phrase refers directly to the License which is not clearly defined so if we're not sure what that means then this also has no meaning.

Question is, if you have a couple of loose ends like that, can you thereafter unravel the entire GPL or use them as grounds for defense against litigation for an alleged infringement of the GPL?

The catch here is that this is a legal document and as such, precise wording and phrasing is required to ensure that the correct meaning is conveyed. It may be that the use of English here isn't vague in some courts of law (or to some people) but put a couple of laywers in court to fight over the GPL and I'm sure that the meaning of ambiguous phrases like this would be entertainment for them for days.

I suppose the real question to ask here is what is to stop anyone from authoring anything titled GNU General Public License Version 5 and thereafter claim it is a later version of the GNU General Public License, originally written by the FSF? Can you imagine if Microsoft found a way to legally author a later version of the GNU GPL that could be used in place of the existing GPL?

In case you have forgotten, I'm not a lawyer and all of the above is just my personal opinion having spent 30 seconds looking and thinking about it. Well maybe less than 30 seconds - I try hard not to think about the GPL, it makes me want to vomit.

Another twist on this is what exactly does Free Software Foundation refer to? The document doesn't define that, either. Does this mean that in a country where there is no entity called the Free Software Foundation that there are limitations on enforcing the GPL? Again, what if Microsoft were to register an organisation known as the Free Software Foundation in Nigeria or some other unobvious country? I'm actually curious if it is possible to register such an entity separately in California to Massachusetts? Or is the register for foundations country wide?

Tuesday July 15, 2008

Is McCain the perfect idiot president for the USA?

In a recent story titled McCain Completee and utter netwit, I was made aware that one of the current contenders for the office of President of the United States is effectively computer illiterate.

There are a couple of gob smacking aspects to this. First is that he is a senator in the current government and appears to make no use of the Internet himself. Obviously many of his drones, err, I mean staffers, can take care of many tasks himself but the reality is he is disconnected from the modern age. Many of us have parents or grandparents who are more technically savy with computers than this guy. It is frightening to think that he is so dependant on others. And to say "Everyones reads Drudge" ... sigh. More likely Drudge got lucky once and now everyone on Capital Hill looks at it. He'd do a much better job by paying attention to websites such as Wikileaks. The next big story won't appear on Drudge first.

But perhaps more importantly, he is glaringly disconnected with the modern age. The Internet is already part of everyday life for tens of millions of Americans and in some cases (like moi :) replaces the role once played by the TV. Heck, I wonder if he even has his own mobile(cell) phone? Or does he have an aide to manage that for him too? And perhaps he doesn't even go to the stalls in the bathroom alone either and needs someone to clean him up afterwards?

So will this stop him being elected? Heck no. There's the Amish communities that live in pockets of the USA are choose to live an evenless technical life. That's not to say that they will (or will not) vote for him, just that there is a really huge spectrum of lifestyles in the USA and that some people will find solace in McCain's choices.

In a country that is filled with Christian fundamentalist groups, and other religious groups (like The Family), that lobby the government and pull strings, it would seem that being connected with God is more important than being connected with the present day world that we live in.

But the United State of America is a democracy, thus if the Americans want they can choose to vote for a continuation of Republican policy to hasten the slide down.

So I'm elitist. Or am I? Yes, the Internet is a tool, just as the phone, car, TV, etc are. Would it be appropriate to elect a President that was unfamiliar with all of these? Perhaps one that couldn't drive?

The most significant danger that we face, all of us who use the Internet, is politicians who do not understand the Internet passing laws about how it should be operated and used. Admittedly this is no easy task as the Internet is constantly changing, evolving, making it hard for even those that work with it to keep up. And how do politicians respond? Bills such as the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), proposed bills such as he ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement). Having people unfamiliar with the Internet in power poses a very real threat to how it will function in the future. Can you imagine if the luddites such as those that work for the RIAA and MPAA were to be elected to the Whitehouse or Capitol Hill?

Now maybe it is a tall order to expect someone in the President's office or even Government to be familiar with every aspect of everyone's life in the USA, but the Internet is fast becoming as peculiar as the phone. Which is to say that it really isn't all that peculiar and as the backbone of more and more services, it is becoming unavoidable.

If a person wishes to be more connected with God than modern day life then they should do that in the correct way: become a monk or otherwise a member of the church. From time to time that is a calling I find very tempting because it would allow me to be free of many materialistic trappings that I must also pay hommage to.

Politicians don't live in a monestary or in the service of the church, they live in service to us. While political leaders are often sworn in by a member of the clergy, it is really with every one of their constituents that they should be swearing an oath to, regardless of which way they voted (or not.)

Thursday July 10, 2008

Israel, Iran, USA, Oil and WW3 - what day do you predict?

In the last week, Iran has been testing some its missles, commentators in Israel and Iran have been discussing how they're not sure where all the correct places are to bomb (in order to put a halt on Iran's nuclear program) and the price of oil has been doing a roller coaster ride.

With a bunch of old men in various positions in both Israel and Iran (and possibly the USA too), it seems inevitable that there is going to be some sort of military action, so the question becomes when and not if.

Now add to that the possibility of Iran striking back, possibly including targetting the USA (if the USA doesn't join Israel first up), then we now have Iran vs Israel & USA. Those odds would seem stacked against Iran but given the USA's commitment elsewhere (i.e. Iraq and the trouble it has had there), it isn't in a position to do much on the ground in Iran unless it is willing to give up Iraq. What are the odds on the USA will increase its exposure in the middle east? Not likely but that will more likely be influenced by the Jewish community here in the USA - what strings can they pull if Israel doesn't want to go it alone.

Now if the USA joins the fray with Israel (because Iran decides those naval vessels close by are inviting targets), who else is likely to join in Iran's cause? Syria? Others? Russia and China have both resisted the USA in the UN Security council when the USA has pushed for hard sanctions or outcomes on Iran, so one has to wonder to what extent they will pitch in. On the Russian side, they're in the process of supplying one of their most advanced air defence systems to Iran, so there's an obvious friendship here. A point to note is that the commentary on an Israel/USA attack on Iran's nuclear program is desirable before the completion of that air defence project in order to increase its chance of success.

So it would seem that the pieces are now being arranged on the board for some sort of skirmish.

There are two potential wildcards at play here - both the American and Iranian administrations in power are not at all popular with the public at large in their respective countries and at least one has a similar problem on a global scale. The political cost (if it is at all cared about) for voluntarily joining any fray vs Iran is quite possibly too high, but retaliation could be sold. It seems highly unlikely that Iran will strike first, but retaliation might sell - or even be necessary.

So, for you gentle readers, I've got two questions:

Somehow I feel like I should offer a prize to whoever gets both of these questions right, but I'm not sure that any prize for a pair of answers except "never" and "no" is really the sort of prize anyone should offer.

In closing I'll comment on this and its coupling with oil. It should be without a doubt that any attack on Iran is going to further threaten oil supplies and thus drive the price further up. Already the USA is sending $700 billion per year out of the country to pay for oil... if the country isn't broke already, at that rate how long before it is? With the GDP of the USA being 60% made up from consumer spending, if the balance continues to tip towards more money being spent on oil, can the USA afford for there to be any conflict in the middle east that results in an increase of the amount of money devoted to filling up their cars and trucks?