====THIS FILE IS ARCHIVAL. See 'Diary' for newest entries
Apr-29-2008:
FOSS.MIT.edu >>In the spirit of free and open source software (F/OSS), we are attempting to establish a community in which information will be freely exchanged, so that we may further the understanding of open source and its implications outside the realm of software development. We invite researchers to post their papers on open source and free software here, and to add themselves to the research directory, so that our community can become steadily larger and more comprehensive.
FOSSTools.org
SeriousGames.org
TED.com >>Ideas Worth Spreading
OnTheCommons.org/content.php?id=1807 >>The Economics of Online Commons - When Information Is Free, What’s the Business Plan?
AboutUs.org/3DN_Introduction
http://OpenMoney.NING.com/forum/topic/show?id=1180168:Topic:5965 >>The Story of How Humans Came to Live in Peace and Plenty
http://code.google.com/p/socialsolutionsmatrix/
JRF.org.uk
NaturalNews.com
Stopc51.com
HeartLand.org/Article.cfm?artId=23140 >>Gates Urges Feds to Increase Skilled Labor Pool for Technology
Hese-Project.org
DemocracyByThePeople.BlogSpot.com >>"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." - Thomas Jefferson
BeyondTheGrassyKnoll.com
ThinkOrBeEaten.BlogSpot.com >>Everything we know is wrong. It's the best kept secret out there. The truth is that life is threatened in a world controlled by greed and power. It's time to wake up, rise up and recreate the world that deserves to exist. A place of peace, equality and creativity that forever strives to become the best of all possibilities.
OTRS.org >>OTRS is an Open source Ticket Request System (also well known as trouble ticket system) with many features to manage customer telephone calls and e-mails. The system is built to allow your support, sales, pre-sales, billing, internal IT, helpdesk, etc. department to react quickly to inbound inquiries. Do you receive many e-mails and want to answer them with a team of agents? You're going to love the OTRS!
Natural-Person.ca
PBSBlog.com
Advogato.org/article/971.html >>Free Choice: the "Social Business" model and Free Software
RedPepper.org.uk/article768.html >>The commons, the state and transformative politics
BillTotten.BlogSpot.com
FiveLiteracies.TypePad.com/richard_hames
FAS.USDA.gov/icd/india_knowl_init/india_knowl_init.asp The "Starvation Treaty"
PoliticalAffairs.net >>Marxist Thought Online
Nestle.com/SharedValueCSR/Overview.htm >>For a business to be successful in the long term it has to create value, not only for its shareholders but also for society. We call this Creating Shared Value. It is not philanthropy or an add-on, but a fundamental part of our business strategy.
Nestle-WatersNA.com
Apr-27-2008: Monsanto: Patent Pigs
http://YouTube.com/watch?v=4-ouf_gmA5o
http://YouTube.com/watch?v=MtkKLcpxTWc
http://YouTube.com/watch?v=TZBWVJZ9YWM
http://YouTube.com/watch?v=1WNMWcj_-4U
http://YouTube.com/watch?v=iJg6TlC1kNo
http://YouTube.com/watch?v=jNezTsrCY0Q >>The Future of Food - Introduction
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-842180934463681887 "The World According to Monsanto" FDA connections.
Apr-27-2008: Bill Gates on Pharmaceuticals: The System Isn't Working
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/04/bill-gates-what.html and http://SystemsBiology.net
"'If a drug company ever invents a treatment for something like malaria, it'd be immediately beset by calls to give the drug away. "So they choose never to work in those areas," he noted sympathetically. "The current incentive system isn’t doing it."
After one scientist asked if Gates would consider open source uses in health research, the man who built his $280 billion company on the power of intellectual property bristled.
"There's free software and then there’s open source," he suggested, noting that Microsoft gives away its software in developing countries. With open source software, on the other hand, "there is this thing called the GPL, which we disagree with."
Open source, he said, creates a license "so that nobody can ever improve the software," he claimed, bemoaning the squandered opportunity for jobs and business. (Yes, Linux fans, we're aware of how distorted this definition is.) He went back to the analogy of pharmaceuticals: "I think if you invent drugs, you should be able to charge for them," he said, adding with a shrug: "That may seem radical."
'"
Apr-24-2008: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D1347B14-5364-45C5-8C46-950C6541801D.htm >>The farmers who are committing suicide in India are precisely in those areas where genetically engineered cotton is being grown by Monsanto [a chemicals and agricultural science corporation].
Apr-23-2008: Code.Google.com/p/socialsolutionsmatrix >>To create an intelligent interface to match oppurtunities and resources to problems, desires and dreams of individuals, small groups, organizations, corporations, governments, and anything inbetween.
Apr-22-2008: Watching "It's a Sunshine Day" YouTube.com/watch?v=NaCCG7QkM_c just because it's been stuck in my head and I've been observing over the last few years how many popular songs contain the words "SUN", "sunshine", "day" or other phoenix-fire-mystery concepts such as "change", "new", "fresh", "harvest", "season" etc. Listen for them, especially in Christian pop music and you'll hear one of them within the first verse almost every time.
My favorite line from this Brady Bunch song is "Love and SUN are the same."
Apr-22-2008: Posted to http://Blog.P2PFoundation.net/the-trouble-with-ourselves/2008/04/22
A friend of mine recently wrote:
> At what point did
> someone say, "let's all get jobs, and spend all of our time away from our
> family just to put a roof over our head that we could just build ourselves?
> And food on the table that we could have grown ourselves?"
Does the word "ourselves" mean:
1. Each person must fend for themselves in solitary confinement.
2. A group of people working together.
If #1 (I doubt it), then tell me your thoughts on trading skills in general.
If #2, then how large can the group become before there is trouble?
In other words, why are humans unable to 'scale' society (a group of people), and when does the breakdown begin? At what number of humans, or under what conditions does trade become a negative instead of a positive?
If we uncover the mechanical failure in our organizing, doesn't it seem likely we could 'fix' that problem and then begin to outcooperate the capitalists?
Are food and shelter really as expensive as we are sold? If not, then where is the resource leak?
Apr-21-2008: GettingCleverTogether.com, FullCirc.com
Apr-21-2008: Posted to P2PFoundation.net/Free_Production
Free Production is a true Mode Of Production that recovers the Costs of Physical Sources while using Free Design for all Virtual Sources.
Free Production is not just Free Hardware, because that term is limited to the 'virtual' or 'soft' or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_(metaphysics) universal] portion of things.
Free Production is therefore about completing and complementing the ideals of Free Software by addressing the physical, tangible, fungible properties of Space, Time, Mass and Energy required to finally begin real Peer Production in a "Free as in Freedom" manner.
==User Freedoms==
A list of Freedoms analogous to the Software Freedoms defined by the Free Software Foundation at http://GNU.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
"Free Production" is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of "free" as in "free speech," not as in "free beer."
Free Production is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the product. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the product:
* The freedom to use the product, for any purpose (freedom 0).
* The freedom to study how the product works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the Physical Sources and Virtual Sources is a precondition for this.
* The freedom to redistribute other instances of this product so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
* The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the Physical Sources and Virtual Sources is a precondition for this.
==Possible Applications==
* Social Networking Website where all users become partial owners of the Physical Sources required for that hosting.
* Agriculture where the collective consumers hold the debt burden and have full control.
* Restaurant where customers become parital owners whenever they pay Price Above Cost.
* Local government where each citizen has divisible (the right to secede) ownership weighted by the amount they chose to pay toward that Public Utilty instead of Tax.
* OTHER APPLICATIONS (must work in all cases)
==Comments==
This is a rough idea. What is wrong, and what is right? -- Ownut
Apr-17-2008: MountainLand.org >>Mountainland Association of Governments is a political subdivision of the State of Utah, an intergovernmental agency working for all of the cities/towns of Summit, Utah and Wasatch Counties, and the counties of Summit and Wasatch. The Association is govered by the Executive Council , with input from a series of Program Advisory Boards and other coordinating agencies.
>>The current activities of the Association include administration of the Area Agency on Aging (AAA) for the three county area through the Department of Aging and Family Services, and administration of the Metropolitain Planning Organization (MPO) for Utah County through the Department of Regional Planning.
>>Other activities include administration of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, administration of the Economic Development District (EDD), administration of the Rural Planning Organization (RPO) in Wasatch County, administration of the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG, Title XX), community planning services, and other functions as needed and directed by the Executive Council.
Apr-15-2008: Paid the Internal Revenue Service which claims to be part of the US Department of the Treasury. That money will be used to pay a small portion of the interest we US citizens pay the international bankers because we choose to buy (with bonds backed largely by 'public' lands such as national parks) and then also rent that currency from them instead of issuing it ourselves.
Apr-15-2008: At http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/interview-on-peer-to-peer-politics-with-cosma-orsi/2008/04/10 Michel Bauwens said >>The key issue will then become: how do we combine the non-reciprocal peer to peer logic of immaterial production, with the need for reciprocity in the physical production of scarce material goods. When we have the answer to that question, we will have the maturity to shift to a full peer to peer based political economy and civilization.
Apr-14-2008: Posted to P2PFoundation.NING.com/group/hostingp2pinitiatives
Attempting to setup an alternate form of hosting seems to imply there is something wrong with just buying or renting space and tools as people normally do.
I agree there is a problem.
Could each of you please write your high-level description of that problem?
Try to keep the description 'mechanical' in nature - avoiding emotional terms such as "evil" or "greed".
I find it helps to pretend each human actor is a computer process vying for physical resources.
In what way are we (the collective processes) failing to properly allocate and schedule those resources?
We are not operating anywhere near optimum efficiency, but why? Where or what is the bug in the system?
Apr-13-2008: Posted to http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/group/hostingp2pinitiatives/forum/topic/show?id=2003008%3ATopic%3A3043
Cultivating the conditions for meaningful encounters, conversations, collaborations and innovation requires at least space, and probably tools.
My hosting inspiration is in how the "we" can treat property ownership of some space and tools so goals similar to Illich's can surface.
The primary problem I see is how originators that purchase space and tools accidentally retain too much control while newcomers cannot gain a foothold.
Space and tools have real and recurring costs that must be collected from the participants in some manner - a kind of 'tax' or 'rent' needed to cover the expenses of operation so hosting can continue.
The solution I propose - to insure ownership <i>flows</i> as the organization grows - is to understand all "price above cost" (or what is commonly called "profit") is a plea for growth from the user who paid it, and must be handled as an investment from that user toward more space and tools.
As those investments <b>vest</b> to the user who paid them, ownership of the space and tools needed for effective hosting are shared among the participants in a self-balancing manner.
Users who pay more than cost slowly gain ownership.
Users who pay exactly cost retain current ownership.
Users who pay less than cost slowly lose ownership.
Does this seem relevant, or would you say the ownership of hosting facilities is unimportant?
Apr-12-2008: Work is an investment. Profit should be an investment. Therefore, profit is 'captured' work. That captured value is often invested anyway, but does not 'vest' to the actor who paid it. By this we see profit is the basis of ownership concentration.
Apr-10-2008: Trying to restart the message of source freedom.
Apr-10-2008: COfundOS.org >>Cofundos helps to realize open-source software ideas, by providing a platform for their discussion & enrichment and by establishing a process for organizing the contributions and interests of different stakeholders in the idea.
Apr-10-2008: FOSSFactory.org >>FOSS Factory is the only website where the community collaborates on every aspect of free/open source software production, including design, funding and development. Our mission is to help accelerate the advancement of free/open source software.
Apr-09-2008: Watching "Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)" www.Archive.org/details/CreatureFromTheHauntedSea
Apr-08-2008: Returned from CA
Older entries: diary-mar-2008