Open source at the blunt edge.

Here is an object lesson in why free and open source software is a symbol of good ethics.

The other day, I had a PDF sent to me by the private firm to which the UK government outsources its visa application work in Nepal. The PDF was a list of documents required to apply for a UK Visa. That list is nowhere on the internet, because it asks for documents that very, very few Nepalis could realistically provide; it is, in effect, a challenge to produce impossible documentation. Bear in mind that the average per capita income in Nepal is less than £200, and most are unemployed with little or no property. Nonetheless the document list requires, for example, tax records for three years. I know no one in our village who pays tax save, perhaps, the largest monasteries; how could they? In any case, the institutional corruption involved in the visa industry in Nepal, or Nigeria or pretty much anywhere else, is staggering and a subject of research by a few of my colleagues. Every university who admits foreign students knows this. So that PDF? It was printed using unlicensed software – the header on the document says so. I’d be surprised if they had paid for their copies of Office. Do they care? Why should they? It’s enterprise Britain! ‘We don’t want you unless you can lie about having £6000 so well that we can’t tell.’ Britain is proud to be represented by an outsourced firm operating on such a deep assumption of corruption-within-bounds that they are not embarrassed to send out official documentation using an unlicensed programme.

By contrast, one can get a free Nepali dictionary and clear instructions on how to install it into Open Office from FOSS Nepal. The visa service could run their entire office legally using their distribution of Linux and applications. It wouldn’t cost taxpayers, or visa applicants, a penny. Wouldn’t that be a much better symbol of what Britain stands for?

Stan Freberg to the (sardonic) rescue

In my youngest daughter’s school they celebrated the visit of Green Santa, who was into Repair Reuse Recycle sort of prezzies. I like that. Stan Freberg, 50 years ago, took on the commercialization of Christmas in an astonishing recording called Green Christmas which the US broadcast media did its best to sink. Here’s a link to a page which has both the recording and the album cover. Note Freberg’s discussion of satire (outrage barely concealed with sweetness) and the lineage Voltaire-Swift-Al Capp.

And while we’re on the subject: a bit more satire.

Pigeonholes

For the sake of the Scottish Centre for Himalayan Research, I submitted myself to a course on project management a fortnight ago. It was good and bad. There were some exceedingly useful tools for actually projecting a project: where the crises might fall, how to distribute resources. There were some bogus bits, like the the instructor’s defensive reaction to being teased about team-building exercises. And there was the intriguing, taken with much salt, reference to the Myers-Briggs personality type exercise. Divination systems interest me, and this looks like a divination system with all the right features: it’s just complex enough to make everyone feel special and well-served when they get their analysis, rather like the Western star sign + Chinese star sign combination books that were around a few years back. There are 16 types, though the distribution is uneven.

So I went and found an online testing service to see what I was, and then tested myself again to see if the results were consistent. They were, though I’m sure any such online test would be scoffed at by the professionals; apparently I’m an INTJ, though with the percentages on the test the only factor on which I stuck out was the N. (I 56 N 62 T 01 J 33, for later reference) The other delightful thing about this system is that it is apparently based on Jung’s three axes (introvert/extrovert, intuition/sense, thinking/feeling) with one more thrown in (perceiving/judging). Levi-Strauss would be thrilled.

Does this mean that we now have a new form of metadata for blogs?

But what I really want to know is this. The various web pages dedicated to M-B personality types all list famous people who fit that type (I was deeply gratified to find Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson in my 16th of the human race). Clearly, though, neither of those esteemed gentlemen was alive to take the test. How were they pigeonholed? Could I invent a nom de plume, force them into fame, kill them off and then discover what their MB type was? (Much to my shame I find that Arnold Schwarzenegger is also apparently an INTJ. Was that Arnie in the Terminator, or Arnie in Sacramento?)

Ossified professor syndrome

During the lecture series offered by an Extremely Famous professor some while back, a number of us at Aberdeen got to talking. Why was it that by the time an academic had become the invited star at a famous lecture series they had absolutely nothing new to say?

Theories included:

1) By the time you’ve got to that stage you’ve got nothing new left to say. This is a version of the ‘all mathematicians do their good work before they are 25’ theory.

2) The Committees That Be would never have the courage to invite someone exciting to give a lecture. The more paranoid version of this is the suspicion that only the toothless are put forward for high profile public roles. Even Zizek, much as I enjoy his snarls, is clearly a pet beast.