We need a public inquiry for the banks

The extent of the cavalier disregard for the well-being of the system that the banks have now shown has only uncovered the tip of the iceberg that we have known exists in the British (and world) banking industry and culture for a long time. I have heard finance types for a long time say only the banks attract the smartest people.

What matters now is public confidence. The only way we can get visibility of what has happened in British Banks is to have an enquiry and make public the processes that have run banks for a long time. If Britain can do this then they will be doing a lot better tan the US have done, which is tantamount to a circus show where banking leader can sit there and plead the fifth or not recall, without recourse.

The only way for the banks to get credibility back is increase the understanding of what they do and what goes on day-to-day.

The Levenson inquiry has at least shed light on the processes between politicians and the media. Banks has shown a tenancy to say "it's too complicated" for too long, and we need to shed a light on the secrecy and apparent complexity of the products and services they sell.

You can't create money out of nothing and as we have seen the banks are trying to do just that - way too often. This is what caused the financial crisis and is also a core driver of the current European crisis. In both cases, a sudden decease in value and confidence evaporated apparent gains that were never there. The are wholesale cases of fraud on a global scale and we see that the people in these banks are quite prepared to do it, and not take responsibility because they are too big to fail.

If we look at the effect that the BBC has had on the quality of the media, shouldn't we at least consider the benefits a public bank might provide, such a bank can be held to account openly and help set a behavioural standard that other banks can use as a guide.

Sign the petition for an enquiry at number ten:
https://submissions.epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/35421

... and anywhere else you can find one ... how long can this ooozing public disregard and cynicisim be tolerated?

FaceBook is watching ...

FaceBook is asking me to identify this person, i know this guy isn't on fb - which imples they are doing face detection on photos and trying broaden the face db.

FaceBook is watching ..

MyPOD hits 50K ...

Well other apps are hitting a million but it still a nice milestone - with more phones activated each day, the downloads increase almost exponentially. The last 10k downloads were in the last 4 weeks (It's been up for 8 months).

http://my-pod.org

letter to my MP protesting the digital economy stitch-up

FOR THE ATTENTION OF:

Meg Hillier MP
Hackney South and Shoreditch

Thursday 8 April 2010 robert munro
xxx address

xxx email
Dear Meg Hillier,

I am writing to express my dismay at the pushing through of the digital economy bill during the washup period before the election.

There are so many problems with the bill and the way it is being handled:-
* It will criminalise the innocent because it will lead to an increase of peoples wifi being compromised(hacked) in order to download on their connection (very easy to do!).
* Music and film companies have been goudging customers and artisits for years, if they would just sell at a fair price then the problem of piracy would go away with out the need for people to be criminalised.
* The costing of illegal downloading to the industry is heavily biased. 99% of content downloaded wouldn't have been bought alternatively, contrary to what the music and film industry bodies say.
* At a time when lobbying has been highlighted - it appears to be central to the lack of opposition from MPs (combined with their ignorance of the issues).
* Society is going through a cultural revolution, easy access to content is the norm now and ultimately this bill will further alienate the draconian music and film bodies from normal people. This law will actually be bad for the music and film industries. Attempts to find new business models have always been lacklustre at best, if these companies had their way they would block the internet all together and just go back to selling CDs. There is a lot of free content on the internet and this bill will just drive up demand for that content.
* Giving the government power to block content based on copyright breaches will be manipulated by the music, TV and film industry's to infringe on fair use, especially our right to criticise the mainstream media.

In my opinion what would have been best is a copyright tax on internet connections, or some modification to the distribution of tv licencing money. I desperately hope when the new parliament sits something can be done to amend copyright law to strengthen fair use rights.

In an election which increasingly depends on the internet to get points across, ministers on all sides, have in one fell swoop shown that they do not understand the basic principles that have made the internet a success. Especially when they couldn't even be bothered to show up stand by the decision, absence is not an excuse.

This is a real issue and I will be donating money to real institution that stand up for the rights of ordinary people - not big (outdated) business. And I really hope more is done the issue in the lead up to the election.

You will have to work very hard to earn back my vote, and I normally would vote labour.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Munro.

digital economy bill = digital totalitarian bill

The digital economy bill has been pushed through, this is a clear case of corporate lobbying where both sides have been lobbied and the bill has just been voted through by the record industry's cronies.

I used to think we lived in a democracy - but this just makes a joke of it. There was massive public disapproval of the bill and it gets sneaked through in the 11th hour. Its not even being highlighted in the BBC!!!! the people who want to manipulate free information have won a great victory.

the fact that it easy to hack someone's wireless internet connection - and the fact that its easy to anonymise your IP address makes this bill criminalise people who are completely innocent.

this is a;ll despite the fact the the entertainment industry seem to place a value on download equivalent to the DVD or CD value downloaded - it is very obvious that all downloaded material wouldn't normally be bought alternatively


i have no idea what the consequence of this bill will be.... but i think that it will just serve to create fear of downloading open software and art.

MyPOD is released

After a lot of work, I am proud to announce the release of MyPOD(My Programmes Onn Demand) a new android app that makes podcast management simple.

More info can be found on the MyPOD homepage :
http://www.my-pod.org/

Demoniak freeware

Just found this very nice 3d engine using GLSL, lua based animation. It's a windows binary but seems to run fine on wine (ha ha) and the format is in XMLl so you can see all the code. There are also some very good tutorials on the site - the have a lot of useful GLSL code there in tutorials with explanations of the physical processes they copy. Very nice for learning GLSL.

http://www.ozone3d.net/demoniak3d/

http://www.ozone3d.net/tutorials/index_glsl.php

Why the MPs Expeses fiasco is bad for us ...

There is unending reports of MP's expenses anomalies in the press in the UK lately. While it is truly shocking to see claims for moat cleaning, there are a lot of problems arent being addressed and i think there are more important issues to look at:-

• Why would one become an MP (or a minister) when the pay is only 60K? you aren't going to do it for the money because it's a lot of stress and work.
• What other benefits are MP's geting via industry/companies? It is well known that MP's are lobbied by industry to maintain their interests, but what remuneration is happening there? It is known that remuneration id occuring but it will never be openly disclosed.

These issues combine to shift the balance away from government power - at a time when government power should be increased because of the failure of companies to regulate themselves. The motivations and timings for the 'news break' should be looked at since it's it is pretty obvious in my opinion that these expense claims have been happening not just for years, but for decades, centuries even. Look at how directors of companies use company expenses, will this ever be reported? (no!!).

The case to change the system is strong at the moment - but what changes do we need? We need honest politicians, that is the ideal. Politicians have, and probably will be, always be suspected for thier motives for getting into politics.

Do we look at the minimum changes to resolve the expenses problem? To take away as much expense privileges as possible? This would be the worst solution in my opinion as it will push MP's to seek alternative sources of remuneration (e.g. from industry/lobbyists). Either this, ... or we provide extra incentive, i.e. to raise MP's pay to circa 100k. Hopefully this would attract more talented people as well.

Do we look at the maximum changes? Well what do we want? The system seems to work ok. (Apparently) The worst financial disaster for six decades is happening now but people arent too unhappy - there are no riots, there are no other big groups forming to form an alternative solution. In my opinion, a large scale solution cannot be formulated - it must evolve.

So what changes do we make? I am in favour of devolved government, and also a diverse government. I think diversity in our MP's is the most important thing. It is becoming more and more inadequate to just vote for a party because they have some large overseeing motivation and goal (e.g. Labour, Tory), but to strike a balance between what an MP can do for their local constituency and and MP's larger goals. In my opinion the cabinet should be voted for by the people, and cabinet ministers should run for their positions in an election.

This would be true democracy - for a while.

Android apps on ubuntu = good

There is an article on engadget detailing a plan to be able to run androind apps on ubuntu, (atricle here).

This would be very good for all linux distros and could even go so far as to breathe new life into java-based desktop apps since the plethora of new android apps will give a wealth of new open-source software apps to the linux user. As the android platform matures we will likely see more UI capabilities being introduced.

I really hope this move pans out as it will be good for android and linux in a big way.

OpenLab 5

Openlab are providing a day of workshops & presentations about opensource software, and performances in the evening at Cafe OTO, Dalston. There is a venerable lineup of OpenLab members providing some in depth knowledge during the day and some great performances at night. The preliminary line up goes like this:

DAY: Workshops & Presentations : 12-5pm (free entry).

Presentations

Arduino + PD (Ryan Jordan) : Using Aurdrino and PureData

SC + Processing (Daniel Jones) : Using Supercollider with Processing

Pd/Gem + ergates (Chris McCormick) : PureData audiovisual software

Groworld (Dave Griffiths) : Permaculture meets online games via guerilla gardening (http://www.pawfal.org/dave/index.cgi?Projects/Groworld)

Processing/Java/Eclipse/JOGL/GLSL(Rob Munro) : Techniquies for using Processsing with the Eclipse IDE.(http://robmunro.net/video)

Din (S Jagannathan) (http://code.google.com/p/din), Boxar (http://www.poojyum.com/boxar) : A free software musical instrument for performing indian classical music live (but not just)

Workshops

Fluxus (Dave Griffiths) : (free, 1-2hrs, max 10) The venerable OpenGL/scheme environment. (http://www.pawfal.org/dave/index.cgi?Projects/Fluxus)

APODIO (Julien Ottavi) : (1hrs, max 20) Gnu/Linux multimedia distribution LiveDVD

Introducing Processing for Visual Artists (Evan Raskob) : (£10, 2hrs, max 20)

NIGHT: Performances : 7:30pm-12:30am (£5 entry) - doors 7pm

dskg - Uses circuit bended machines altogether with open sources (http://www.myspace.com/dskg)

Jeremah - pixelated landscapes of techno beats, music box melodies and processed street noise (http://www.jeremah.co.uk/)

Rob Munro - audiovisual work exploring the world between (http://robmunro.net/video)

TheNoiser - The Noiser use noise as musicality, combined to an approaches of programmatic composition (http://www.noiser.org)

PixelPusher - video and sound pieces; interactive art including new musical instruments (http://pixelist.info/)

Ryan Jordan - Body-sensor-noise-strobe-hypnosis (http://ryanjordan.org/)

Daniel Jones - generative audio-visual works (http://www.erase.net)

S Jagannathan - a free software musical instrument for performing indian classical music live (but not just) (http://code.google.com/p/din)

Robert Atwood - experiments with the sound created by feedback (http://variseq.nongnu.org/)

Chris McCormick - uses Free Software to make bleepy crunchy music (http://mccormick.cx)

see you there …

What if ...

The value of privacy ...

These essays by Bruce Schneier really describe the the threat to our basic right to privacy very accurately.Legislation that protects privacy will not happen at all if we do not act, and soon we will have very little control over the level and data that is stored about us in an ouvert and also a clandestine way.
BBC: "Privacy please"
Schnieder: "Your Vanishing Privacy"
Schnieder: "The Eternal Value of Privacy"

PhotosByColour.com

PhotosByColour.com is nearing completion, anyone who want to index their photos on the site can create a username and import their flickr or picasa photos into our index where they will be analysed for colour information and then be searchable by colour. The url is:-
http://www.photosbycolour.com
or, for the americans:-
http://www.photosbycolor.com

I am just trying to finalse the rules surrounding copyright - users should only import photos that are licenced under creative commons or are their own photos.

Immersion - 4th December

I'll be doing a set at Immersion - Flea Pit, London. 4th Dec 2008, 7:30p

This is pixselpushers regular Tuesday night thing, always an impressive collection of artists performing there.

IE DOM BUGS : innerHTML='' clears child elements.

I was using ELEMENT.innerHTML ='' to clear the children of a node, so i could layout the same elements after sorting an array - to my suprise when i tried to re-add the children in the correct sort order, they were all empty. Doing the same thing in firefox was ok. It turns out that this is a known bug in IE. So the moral of the story is, if you want to clear the children of a node but want to keep the children for use elsewhere then DON'T use ELEMENT.innerHTML=''. Instead do something like:-

while (ELEMENT.children.length>0) {
ELEMENT.removeChild(ELEMENT.children[0]);
}

Here is more info about this little shocker
http://www.quirksmode.org/js/tests/dom_innerhtml.html

Dojo based style editor.

This is a fairly simple style editor I have built in DOJO for debugging style probs in IE. It works fairly well and uses the dojo.getComputedStyle method which retrieves the computed style for an HTML element, then it makes a property list of all the style attributes.

It just embeds with a single HTML tag, I usually position it past the right of the page so that it doesn't obscure anything else.

It runs with DOJO 1.1.0 but should be ok with 1.0 as well, as it uses fairly basic functions. You will also need to load the basic dojo library in the standard way(1) - I won't repeat it here. I have just been including the code with a JSP include - but really I should use the dojo packaging framework. Here is the component code(2)

So you need 3 things in this order:-
1. Dojo include
2. Component code include (just paste in or use [AS|JS|PH]P include)
3. The embed example below.

This is the embed example(3):-

<div id="styler" dojotype="robmunro.StyleEditor" style="position:absolute;left:1000px;top:0px;display:block">

Here is an explanation of the controls:-

textbox = input the id of an element(e.g."idElement") or some JS to select it (e.g. dojo.byId("idElement"))
undo = Undo last change (1 only) - may not work :(
get = Click on get and then the next click on any part of the page loads the clicked HTML element in the style editor.
show = Highlight the current element in the page.
parent = Highlights the parent element in the page - clicking loads it in the editor.
children = show a menu of the children of this element, clicking loads it and hovering highlights it in the page.
siblings = as for children.

The rest of the column shows the computed style for the page, the attributes are editable and if the edit was OK the text turns green, otherwise the attribute turns red, and the error is in the tool tip.

This has saved me loads of time debugging IE styles - which, as we all know, are quite buggy. So i hope it helps someone else out there as well.

I guess I should make it realizable and draggable as well. Maybe I will update it soon.

Here is a screenshot of it in action.

terminate called after throwing an instance of 'Gtk::IconThemeError'

I have been using my ubuntu setup at work lately and running vmware for windows apps - but after uninstalling kiba-dock (svn version) i got the above error and VMware wouldn't start, which gave me a bit of a heart attack as i really can't work without vmware.

I found the solution over here (translated) - when kiba dock was uninstalled it wiped out some of the icons inthe ./local/share/icons directory. So i was able to manually copy the icons from the vmware install directory to my local icons directory.
i.e. copy
/vmware-distrib/lib/share/icons/hicolor/
over
./.local/share/icons/hicolor/

this updated the missing icons and VMWare then started fine. I would say there are probably better solutions to the problem, but this got me put of trouble anyway. obviously, it's always a good idea to back up the target directory as well.

I seem to be missing icons left right and centre though, so i would not recommend uninstalling kiba-dock via 'make uninstall', and my desktop applets dont seem to take configuration any more. Will get to the bottom of it though ;)

Facebook the biggest thing in tech?

After seeing that the top tech story on the BBC today is "Fans fight for Scrabulous future" i was a bit perplexed.

Is the main use of technology these days those time-wasting facebook apps. Surely there are much more relevant tech stories than the fact that some users can't waste 8 hours a day on Facebook. It is becoming the default easy news story, but really, how about something a bit more relevant. There was no 'Sun buys MySQL' or 'Oracle buys BEA' stories at all, both developments of that day being a lot more significant than whether some people can't play scrabble or not.

london bikeathon

I am doing the london bikeathon on sunday - anyone who wants to sponsor the great cause (lukemia research) can donate here:-
http://www.justgiving.com/robmunro

At least someone admits it

Just saw this on BBC, the Ozzie gov has admitted (somewhat stupidly) that they are in iraq for "energy security".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6272168.stm

If only the American government would come clean and do the same then we might actually get somewhere. It is so sad that all this destruction has taken place int the name of "energy security" if only that money could have been spent on doing R&D into new production then there would have been a greater return. I have no idea how much has actually been spent but it has to be huge, the US has t east had three lots ob US$80B so there must have been at least US$500B spent by everyone involved.

And how short sighted is the term "energy security" anyway? surely if we could get free energy form the sun then that be be a more more secure. There term energy security more related to income security for large oil companys. Who are still only spending a fraction of their profits on new tech.

As it stands at the moment everyone in Iraq knows that the west is in there for energy security and so they'll never give in and we'll just keep on sinking money into it. Luckily there is only a year and a half of more Bush left, maybe someone will have the sense to pull out and give thing a chance to settle, cos they aren't going to while the west in there.