thoughts.
One can argue for hours about the benefits and detriments of hosting the 2010 World Cup – but anyone has to conceed that having the event on our doorstep is going to be fun. Somehow this video brough that home to me.
Seen first at coda.co.za.
I finally got down to properly reading the Time Magazine article about the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. I find the whole idea, although pretty vague, interesting – getting different religions to work together to help solve the worlds problems.
Straight away it’s pretty easy to be cynical about this, particularly if you don’t like Tony Blair – but perhaps he is just what this kind of project needs. Nobody is pretending that getting six major religions to work together is easy, and so a big name behind the project might just provide the motivation participants need.
His speech in New York gives some more details – the first part is educational, he calls it religious literacy at one point. To me though the second part has more potential – mobilising faith to help persue the UN Development Goals – beginning with an anti-malaria campaign. I don’t say that simply because I think that the humanitarian goals are more important; but rather I think that they can achieve more and in the long run will help in the work towards the first goal.
There will, of course, be those who think that the whole idea is irrelevant. This isn’t the place I want to deal with the religion argument, but I do think that Blair has a point with his mission. One can’t cast religion aside as irrelevant – and I think that it is quite possible that it will become more relevant in the future, in positive ways (this idea of faith and globalisation is also an interesting one). At the same time, even if you disagree, it is undeniable that religion plays a significant role in the world and the ideals of the project are something to strive for.
As complicated and unclear as it is Tony Blair is onto something here – let’s see where he takes it.
All the problems with blogging I talked about in the beginning are returning – and I am working against them, beginning today with another post.
Seeing Matthew Buckland’s post about decisions being made about their redesign of the Mail & Guardian website reminded me how interesting the whole process has been to follow – between his posts and Vincent Maher’s I’ve gotten an idea of wher they are going – and am really looking forward to seeing the final result.
Both the Mail & Guardian and The Times have began to use the web really well (particularly interesting is The Time’s new Multimedia Section). While I think that both can make a lot more progress in intergrating everything and sometimes not detracting from the actual news – it all looks like it’s going pretty well.
Google Docs Offline has finally been enabled for me and after 1 minute of trying it out I’m very impressed and I think I may just find myself using the service a lot more. Some thoughts:
Right. So yes everybody knows, Facebook Chat has been rolled out to the rest of us not considered worthy of testing it – and it “changes everything”.
Vincent Mayer sure got that one right – and as everyone is busy explaining your Facebook contacts are different from your normal IM contacts. In my own experience I have far more people as friends on Facebook that I only kindof know compared to IM, and this has the potential to change how friendships are built (something I don’t think social networks are getting right at the moment). Of course it’s not just as deep as that – this just makes it easier to organise stuff with people.
This all good and well, then why hate it? It’s the old story of having everything in one place (think Google). It’s not that I have a problem with using Facebook for all these things, but it just makes it so much harder to move to the next big thing. This is why everyone is starting to think data portability and interoperability.
But just making Facebook Chat work with Jabber isn’t going to solve the problem; in the end I’d say we need decentralised social networks along the idea of Open ID (anyone keen?). Until then though, Facebook it is.
The failing of my blogging caught up with me all too quickly; no time to write. Nevertheless I’m back – hopefully with more regularity.
So Neotel has released their pricing for their first offering, and generally people don’t seem that happy. But for me it’s a little more simple:
So I’m paying R451 for internet which isn’t really as good as I need it to be. If I was to upgrade to a 10GB cap I would be paying R742 (bearing in mind that all of this is shaped, and that it is probably cheaper with another ISP … but let’s not get too specific).
So now Neotel wants to charge me R600 for the 10GB option; which looks like a nice saving. Oh and for interest they would charge me R80 per extra GB as opposed to R70.
Then again Neotel is supposed to be unshaped, but that really isn’t an issue for me. And there is the 24 month contract issue … no chance.
So we are looking at a nice little R150 saving. After that build up. Right.
It’s something nice, but nothing revolutionary – I’ll let someone else test it.
So David Bullard has been fired from the Sunday Times for a supposedly racist column he wrote.
Now without getting too hung up about the issue the column was really doing three things; claiming that Africa would have been exploited by whoever got here first, that Africa would not be where it is by itself and that African leaders are always looking for someone to blame their problems on. He satirises the ideas of the evil of the west, to a certain degree, and points out what the west has brought to Africa.
While it may seem that he was mocking old African traditions, but rather he is mocking those who still hold onto them. By being satirical in the way he is he is mocking those who hold onto these traditions but also adds value to what they meant back when they where relevant.
Suddenly the indigenous population realise what they have been missing all along: someone to blame. At last their prayers have been answered.
This is the only other line which one might be able to consider racist; but all that he is talking about is the tendency to blame the legacy of colonialism for problems.
So while the column may have been out of line it asks some valuable questions; can we blame colonialism and are western ideals wrong?
Parts of a letter to News24 sums it up quiet nicely:
This is a perfect example of what David was trying to portray in his letter: the previously disadvantaged desperately need someone to blame for all the ills of present and past. In this case he is the scapegoat for having written a short satire (if anyone out there understands this), and a rather amusing article.
Jouster,
Pretoria
Ivo Vegter has some interesting ideas about what may have been the real motivation behind all of this.
Maybe I am wrong and the column was to a degree racist, but I can’t see how that would have been it’s primary purpose.
South African governmental ministers are not generally known for their wise decisions regarding technology, but maybe that just comes from the Department of Communications.
The Minister of Public Service and Administration, Geraldine Fraser-Moleket, made excellent comments recently regarding software patents and Microsoft’s ‘open’ office standard.
The particular remarks were made to a free software conference a month or so ago – basically she said two things:
“[It is] unfortunate that the leading vendor of proprietary office software, which enjoys considerable dominance in the market, chose not to participate and support ODF in its products but rather to develop its own competing document standard, which is now also awaiting judgement in the ISO process. If it is successful it is difficult to see how consumers will benefit from these two overlapping ISO standards. I would, however, like to appeal to vendors to listen to the demands of consumers as well as the free software movement. Please work together to produce interoperable document standards. The proliferation of multiple standards in this space is confusing and costly,”
I haven’t really kept up with all the debates about Microsoft’s alternative format; but I am aware that a lot of people are unhappy with it – particularly in the Open Source community – and so I must assume that they are right about this one. So +1 to the minister for choosing the right side of this issue.
Fraser-Moleketi then said that software patents were and “issue which pose a considerable threat the growth of the African software sector” and how there had been “recent pressure by certain multinational corporations to file software patents in our national and regional patent offices. Whereas free software and open standards are intended to be open and encourage competition, patents are exclusive and anti-competitive by their nature.”
“Whereas there are some industries where the temporary monopoly granted by a patent may be justified … there’s no reason to believe that society benefits from such monopolies being granted for computer programs [and inventions],” she said.
This one is a bit easier to understand; it is very clear that larger companies are abusing their positions by threatening smaller competitors, and open source providers, with legal action. Fortunately South African does not allow software patents – but it is an ongoing issue around the world.
But this post isn’t really about why software patents are bad and why the Open Document Standard is good enough, that’s too complex – rather what I’ve found most interesting is how the Norwegians have reacted.
After having a bit of troubles around the approval process for the standard over there, protesters pick up on the Minister’s remarks and liked them. So something positive today: minister does the right thing and South Africa gets recognition for it. Now when last did that happen?
Forward note – just because this is the first real post doesn’t mean all posts are about politics … I’m not that simple – ok.
A number of people on Mail and Guardian’s Thought Leader are asking an interesting question – does that possibility of a chance in leadership in Zimbabwe mean that President Mbeki’s policies have worked? Of course everyone has been criticising such policies for ages, but let’s take a look at this theory.
Takwana Makaya argues that through the mandate from SADC to President Mbeki, he has managed to convince President Mugabe to a number of seemingly small concessions which have swung the elections around completely. These are (with my own additions):
Any requests over and above these may just have alienated the Zimbabwean Presidency from further negotiations, the idea was to stay on his side.
This generally has been the idea behind quiet diplomacy; it is supposed to be better that there is no open confrontation over issues – the problem is that a little sternness is occasionally. Specifically around the recent events surrounding the releasing of results.
This idea is all very well, but there is one crucial point which most of the respondents to a Talkback question raised – you can only let a situation deteriorate so far before you have to chance strategies, and Zimbabwe is one of those cases where the strategy should have changed ages ago.
Pity about the whole African unity thing preventing that one.
Right. Sitting here, power just came back on – blame Eskom. Decide to try this personal blogging thing again – probably a stupid idea, but what the hell. Install Wordpress (again), install theme (note to self – make a new one) – start writing first post.
How does a first post actually work? Are you supposed to introduce yourself? But to who? No one is reading the blog yet.
Forget that; this is a space filler – something to get the ball rolling. Real posts can come soon, besides – I already blog … just not this whole personal thing.
