My Ruminations on Software

Around 3 decades ago, in the era when PCs were nto so common, Hackers used to call IBM the devil. After a decade of that so many things have changed, IBM did some stupidity and devil’s crown went to the headquarters of Microsoft. Now after 2 decades the devil’s crown is getting slipped from the head of Microsoft to Google, if it keeps on growing at the same pace, which I believe they will because organizations, who have same size as of Google, still working the old fashioned way which will kill their ability to monopolize the market. . I am strictly against censoring the Internet because I think a human must be free to express its thoughts, Google has taken lots of steps in killing that freedom. In my country, Anybody can go to a News Channel or a Newspaper and speak or publish his views and thoughts about corruption, Irrigation or Government actions, about Global issues, about Software or about anything else, it seems like, today Google has problems with that kind of freedom (Their Page-Ranking Algorithm is patented). One heck of a selfish act. Money is more important than society, thats what corporate thinks and Google thinks the same

 

Hence I thought of moving my blog form Google to VOX , but then i thought it will be like dealing with the effects rather than the cause. To change anything, to solve any problem, whether personal, financial or professional or political, we need to dig deeper into the cause rather than banging our heads with the effects of that cause. I call it the 1st postulate of mine: “the law of cause-and-effect”. Even VOX uses proprietary software, finally I found 2 OpenSource alternatives: LiveJournal and WordPress. I am deciding between the two.

 

Internet will be a place like a Free Country, a country where people can speak about what is right and what is wrong… only if every user has freedom to express himself. So lets think about individual freedom. Take my case, my email account is at Google, my blog is at Google and my web-site is made of Google Pages and hence by using all of my internet services through Google I am letting them monopolize my life. I am letting them control my life the way they want. My individual freedom is at stake. Now Google can not control or monopolize my life with gmail only as there are 100s of other free email services but if I put all of my information on Google then it will be very easy for them to kill my virtual-real-Life. So I came up with a solution, I will be using gmail but I will be moving my blog to somewhere else and I am planning a replacement for Google Pages too.

 

Internet is on the verge of getting monopolized, selfishly-controlled and censored before people are going to realize it. We need Freedom not Slavery… If Internet gets censored then it will take a lot of time before it gets freed again (if ever). India took 200 years before it got independence and it took many-many generations of African-Americans before they got acceptable as humans, I do not want the same thing happening to internet. The great Nelson Mandela put his whole life in doing something impossible to achieve. I guess, Software World needs more than one Nelson Mandela and I am afraid we have only one and he is aging

 

It will be the much worse than the 2 world-wars put together. Billions of people will perish, including me. I don’t want this to happen. So if you can get your brain to think about your own life then you will be among the very few of the intellectuals that exist. Why I do not speak like “We want Freedom, Ban the Google actions” or “Free Software” (like GNU) because 90% of users just don’t give a damn about Freedom of other people, they only do something when they themselves get attacked, so I am making this point, they are under attack, as I am already, by using all of the services from Google, so they must think about their copyright work before Google silently removes it from their blog or from its search Engine.

 

Now, before you start putting harsh-comments here, think about your copyrighted work that is going to be vanished and disappeared silently from your blog or your Google Pages or Google search Engine, and you will never ever know what happened….

 

I call it a Netvantage-Point because at this point of technology: when Linux and BSDs are growig, OpenSource is shining and Google is controlling the web-based market, people in Governments and the general public too needs to understand that these events are paining a very-clear picture of the Future, the censored, controlled internet, a primary medium of making money and nothing else. I imagine what will happen if a man claims that he has patent on Car Manufacturing because His great grandfather built the 1st car, so users of cars need to pay royalties to him, only several thousands of Dollars and since he hold the patent, so company will ever manufacturer any car, if they do, they will be jailed or better develop a car without headlight, tires etc etc. Please read the License. Worse, what if someone says he hold the patent on Electricity because Thomas Addison was his ancestor. So people using Electricity must pay royalties to him and he forbids the Government to produce any electricity at all. What do you think where these events will take the development of society ? What do you think the growth of your country men will be ?

 

Nobody hold Electricity patent or Bulb patent because these things were created by Scientists and Scientists do research in Universities or Government based R&D departments (with some exceptions) whereas Software is controlled by corporate. So it is kind of like “Technical People vs Business People”.

 

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( Michael Spinosa at blogster posted this comment:

 

I can see validity to your claims but I must also add that in a capitalistic society people will always be presented with alternative options. Money drives the majority of progress and while there are those select noble few that research and build for a better tomorrow selflessly, even they themselves need to be financed. A capitalistic internet will help keep the internet free because its in the best interest of companies to provide freedom or the illusion there of.

 

P.S – I think your idea of splitting your personal solutions between different providers is an excellent idea. It promotes competition and breaks dependencies exactly as you stated. Great Article!
well, this is what i replied to him (little modified here):

 

> I can see validity to your claims but I must also add that in a
> capitalistic society people will always be presented with alternative
> options. Money drives the majority of progress

 

right, Money drives the society and problem is Corporate cares only about money. The Corporate Motto is, “If replacing people who develop technology and hence this society brings more money then lets replace those people, with poorly technical and brilliantly, selfishly business-minded people”

 

> and while there are
> those select noble few that research and build for a better tomorrow
> selflessly, even they themselves need to be financed.

 

What makes you think that Non-Profit organizations who develop technology can not make money ? (e.g FSF does not make any money but it does not mean it can’t. It just means the people of FSF don’t want to, they have something much more important to focus upon)

> A capitalistic internet will help keep the internet free because its in the best
> interest of companies to provide freedom or the illusion there of.

 

there is no illusion. The man who can not see beyond his monitor or his shirt better stay out of the way of technical people.

 

> P.S – I think your idea of splitting your personal solutions between
> different providers is an excellent idea. It promotes competition and
> breaks dependencies exactly as you stated. Great Article!

you are the 1st one who identified my idea , BTW, thanks for the compliment.

(NOTE: Have you ever thought why University researches and institutes like NASA are not funded by Corporate ? find the reason, that’s the home work )

 

 

 

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Copyright (c) 2007, Arnuld Uttre, #331/type-2/sector-1, Naya Nangal, Distt. – Ropar, Punjab (INDIA) – 140126

 

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