dubious.biz(ness)

Sintha has been on an adventure to acquire broadband. Jakarta’s broadband market is a joke. The real price is 550,00rp (about $55) for 64kbit, but comparitively, imagine 64kbit/sec for $200. 64k is a barely broadband, but in a country where dialup speeds are 12-20kbit/sec, that’s a pretty good deal. Well, actually not a pretty good deal, but it’s the only deal anywhere. In some areas, there is another provider that offers 256kbit for about the same price, but not in her area.

The broadband was finally installed and working yesterday, and now we can finally call each other for FREE on skype. Thank god. And Sintha can look at the Internet in semi-realtime. And since in Indonesia, dialup is metered by the minute, she’ll probably end up saving a bit of money (or at least it wouldn’t cost that much more). She may also get a SkypeIn number like me so all you americans can call her for free. yay yay yay

There is an excellent podcast at Grape Radio which is all about ports. Brits are fascinated by ports, and most colleges in Cambridge have their own cellars. That is one of the benefits of the college system. The port traffic at Wolfson was rather high. I was there when a fresh shipment of orders was causing an architect who was there as a guest speaker to literally salivate at the thought of cheap port. Unfortunately not being a member of the college he wasn’t allowed to buy. At any rate, this podcast is an excellent crash course in port, even if it is the more expensive vintage ports.

As a bit of a scientist I hate the word “free” because it has two distinct meanings, and is so often abused. Free means without cost, and free means without limitations. Of course, cost is a limitation and in a purely capitalist society, free would mean the same thing.

Programmers make the distinction cutely by saying “free as in speech” or “free as in beer”. I count myself as a liberal (which also has a sad double meaning) and unfortunately a lot of liberal “internet activists” believe in free networks. Let me make this clear, even in fantasy, there is no such thing as free as in beer. I don’t care if Cory Doctorow says so, but if you open a wifi AP, if you give out Internet, there is absolutely a cost. People seem to confuse the cost of infrastructure with the cost of access.

Access is not infrastructure. For example, a US citizen has “free” access to their senator. Sending letters to him and getting a response is free. But that access has infrastructure costs and infrastructure costs do not disappear, whether you give away access or not. A senator has a large staff funded by taxpayers, and Internet access may be free but Internet access funds Internet infrastructure. For years people have searched for ways to fund the ability to give away things on the Internet. Be it spyware, advertising, VC money, whatever, someone pays the cost. Of course no one would be so stupid as to suggest that we should start making websites free by taxes, but the suggestion on a lot of small and big cities seems to be that access should be free.

It’s a sad reality, but liberalism is responsible, liberalism generally believes things should be free, and I’m fine with the idea that cities should have lights and roads, but cities should not ruin businesses to provide wireless access to a bunch of people who can pay for it, by forcing literally everyone to pay for it.

The logic seems to run this way:

1. Some access is free, some costs money, access that is free is better because it lacks cost.
2. Access should be free (as in beer).
3. Access should be free (as in speech).
4. Access should be paid for by the largest bureaucracy that is willing to fund it, right typically a city.
5. Everyone shares the cost of something that benefits very few people.

The real problem here is the jump from 2 to 3. While you may feel that access should be without cost, because that’s as cheap as it gets, why is it that the liberal mind seems to associate without cost with real freedom? Real freedoms are very few, and the right to Internet access isn’t one of them. Money gives people the flexibility to buy what they want to, and if you want to increase Internet access, give people more money, not tax them more.

That’s the conservative way. I hate to say it, but that’s one of the biggest problems I have with liberals, and it’s one of the biggest problems that conservatives can throw at liberals, and it seems to kill them in their tracks. My solution: free as in beer isn’t free as in speech. Freedom is earned and freedom has costs. Don’t try to give something away for free if you can pay for it.

So awesome, flickr is working now. I’m very excited, but unfortunately, it’s a lot of work. Check out my flickr account, or check out the bottom of the page, soon to be moving elsewhere if I reorganize the site. Apparently, white is the new orange, so that I assume makes orange the new white, and that means I have a passe design!

snap0002.jpg, originally uploaded by killermonkeys.

The coolest coffee stain I have ever had the pleasure of producing.

I guess I’m a suckr because I just bought a subscription to flickr. Flickr is an incredibly cool webapp (what in the hell do you call these things? They’re the realization of ten million dotcom’s money, and no one can come up with a good name). I’ve watched flickr for some time, and even kicked myself when they gave flickr members a ton of free stuff after they got bought by Yahoo!. The main problem I’ve had with flickr is that the photos live on their site, and I’d like to have my photos on my site. Unfortunately, Gallery is just sucky. It’s yet another example of open source sloth and bloat. I love it, but it just didn’t keep up in features and community with flickr. Flickr’s API and it’s uber-cool status has resulted in it having all sorts of cool utilities like: flickr album, flickr badge maker, Google Earth Flickr plugin….. the list goes on. Anyway, moving all the stuff from gallery to flickr.

London was bombed this morning, three Underground stations and a bus were hit at nearly the same time which not only coincided with the G8 but the awarding of the Olympics to London. I do find it particularly disheartening that a group of people would find that this particular G8 was a good time to blow people up, because in fact they are very close to helping Africans in a signficant way.

I personally feel that Africa’s debt shouldn’t exist either, and I do want to make a serious impact on world poverty. Unfortunately erasing the debt is only a step. I highly recommend anyone read Jim Roger’s book Adventure Capitalist and check out JimRogers.com. Jim travelled through Africa and nearly every other country in the world recently and suggested that very idea, that the debt be erased. But he also noted the disparity of wealth between those who are involved with funneling aid dollars and the normal people. Those in NGOs and other aid funded and aid directing organizations live like modern kings while most of the population starves. Rogers suggested that the withdrawl of aid be the other half to the equation of erasing the debt. I think this is very fair, as it is obvious that poverty still exists despite all of our dollars, and I don’t think that spending more money in Africa is likely to have as much of an effect as forcing African countries to start taking responsibility for their citizens’ welfare and quit living off our supposed aid.

At any rate, the entire situation is sad. Eight of the most important countries get together to do something good and someone has to kill people. I don’t condone terrorism, but I also don’t think you can successfully fight it, and I feel nothing but pain for both those lost lives and those who have invested their lives in mindless hate. They have demonstrated nothing but their inability to care for any life but their own. And at the end of the day, they have done nothing to the great city of London but scare it, and absolutely nothing to the governments of the G8 but piss them off even more.

At any rate, I probably won’t take the tube when the leaders of the eight biggest countries in the world are in a golf resort in Scotland.

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