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June 12, 2005
All you need is to listen
If you considered supporting ONE by sending money, think again. Perhaps there is more you can do. It's about caring for issues and being heard. About compassion and learning from each other. You can make the Third World part of your life. The resources for this are already there and they don't cost much more than your participation. Unfiltered by commercially sponsored media, you can read and learn first hand about what is actually going on.
The Global Voices project is such an attempt. Its publishers are using open-source tools and the power of the webs greatest social phenomenon, blogs, to create a platform for voices from all over the world, not only from the western hemisphere:
The primary mission of Global Voices is twofold: 1) To call attention to the most interesting conversations and perspectives emerging from citizens' media around the world by linking to text, audio, and video blogs and other forms of grassroots citizens' media being produced by people around the world; 2) To facilitate the emergence of new citizens' voices through training, online tutorials, and publicizing the ways in which open-source and free tools can be used safely by people around the world to express themselves.
Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 08:20 AM | Comments (0)
They knew Iraq would be a mess
In its article "Memo: U.S. Lacked Full Postwar Iraq Plan", the Washington Post published today:
A briefing paper prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers eight months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq concluded that the U.S. military was not preparing adequately for what the British memo predicted would be a "protracted and costly" postwar occupation of that country.The eight-page memo, written in advance of a July 23, 2002, Downing Street meeting on Iraq, provides new insights into how senior British officials saw a Bush administration decision to go to war as inevitable, and realized more clearly than their American counterparts the potential for the post-invasion instability that continues to plague Iraq.
Now, disclosure of the memo written in advance of that meeting -- and other British documents recently made public -- show that Blair's aides were not just concerned about Washington's justifications for invasion but also believed the Bush team lacked understanding of what could happen in the aftermath...
...In a section titled "Benefits/Risks," the July 21 memo states, "Even with a legal base and a viable military plan, we would still need to ensure that the benefits of action outweigh the risks."...
...Saying that "we need to be sure that the outcome of the military action would match our objective," the memo's authors point out, "A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise." The authors add, "As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."
Now, why doesn't this surprise me?
Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 07:55 AM | Comments (0)
June 09, 2005
What ONE really does, and doesn't do
While I'm endorsing and encouraging any effort to actually do something about AIDS and to fight poverty, I also have mixed feelings about this campaign. Is it truly about humanitarian motives, or is it another attempt to blend us, to raise lots of money that won't change a thing for good? Additionally I see there's a lot of fashion going with it. Granted, star celebrities making a statement in the ONE commercial are eye catching. If Al Pacino is saying it's cool and every girl's dream Brad Pitt shows up twice, hey, it's got to be cool. The wrist band at the top of the ONE website is really stylish too. Don't you want one?
More things about ONE are questionable. Is it just money that's needed, or is it a change of policies towards Third World countries? What would be required are true efforts by corporations, thinking over their Globalization efforts. It strucks me odd, the topic Globalization is not even mentioned on the site, while it actually is the main cause for current poverty in the Third World. It also annoys me that there is no word about what will be done with the money, if it is invested in permanent changes, such as long term planned education systems, schools and university programs for the poor and true help to support and maintain a locally bound economy, that is not driven by trade treaties with international company networks such as Nestle, Nike, Coca-Cola. Sorry, but stating this is "...in the best American tradition of helping others help themselves..." has a bad aftertaste. It's simply hypocritical to mention "best American tradition" and failing to make any comment about current U.S. policies.
I found World Vision among the names of the founders of the campaign. World Vision is on the black list for humanitarian organizations with a bad history in letting large amounts of money disappear.
For years, World Vision has used tv commercials in which they show closeups in slow motion, big eyes of african kids surrounded by flies. The only information they gave in these commercials was the bank account number of World Vision. Make people feel sorry so they send their money. Is that all there is to it?
You can talk to one.org and ask them to explain why they don't do anything beyond raising money: one@data.org
Globalization is one major reason for poverty. It is caused by the true powers ruling the world, leaders of the western economy, at the top Oil companies and the largest corporate networks.
Addiontal resources:
The ONE campaign
globalissues.org: Causes for poverty
A guide to giving: "World Vision is the largest of the right-wing evangelical organizations."
Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 05:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 07, 2005
It's true.
It was Monday morning and the conference room of the Moscone Center in San Francisco was filled with over 3,800 people, most of them developers. Keynotes of Apples Steve Jobs are always highly anticipated. Historically, it has happened before expectations were running high before a keynote speech of Steve Jobs. Too high sometimes. In some years, the actual news were not able to fulfill the dreams pushed up by rumors and bunch of wishful thinking. Apple is this kind of dreams-come-true company, one of the few that's left, that is about spirit and making things actually happen. At most times Apple has done this in an astonishing yet simple and very elegant sort of way.
It didn't take long until everyone in the Moscone conference room would hold his breath for a second, just moments before falling into applause and laughter, half proudly, half shocked. "It's true." was written in big letters on the black screen of a Keynote slide. The e was shifted down below the line, just like, yes—exactly like in the Intel-logo.
Apple had announced it would shift its entire line of products over to use Intel chips. Not from now on, not tomorrow, but within the next two years. Stocks for Intel and Apple rose that day, for Apple it was 2%. On Tuesday, Apple fell for 8%—not as low as before.
So yes, that means it's a good thing, right? A controversy begun. It had been simmering for a while, caused by the various rumors that had made their way from blog sphere to the surface of Cnet news and the Wallstreet Journal. "It can't be" was the immediate reaction of the community of Mac enthusiasts. Quickly, old experts emerged from respectable Mac veteran sites such as MacNN, finding various reasons why it was never possible Apple would seriously consider such a step.
And yet it has become reality. And there are good reasons why. The first I can think of is business. Jobs made it transparent in clear words when he said "We have great products in line... And IBM just isn't getting us that far...". So it clearly is about the growth and fate of the company. Wether it's also a decision about users is something only the future can tell. But Jobs didn't fall short in making sure everyone in the conference hall understand that Apple is indeed caring for developers and consumers. To put it simple, they made sure this won't fail.
The transition phase of two years is accompanied by a number of concepts that make it as smooth and easy as possible, in a very typical Apple-sort of way. Apple has taken all necessary steps to provide help for developers making the shift. Apple knows development of software is all about costs. Apple also knows, a crucial keypoint in making software for the Mac in the first place is having people using it, lots of people, and to never let those users down. And the third keypoint Apple is aware of is psychology. There had been three major transitions in the life of Macintosh already. Not all of them had happened that smoothly, none of them so quickly. This is going to be a major transition from a technical point of view. From a psychological point of view, regarding the user experience, there should be no experience at all—if it is not one that's very much improved.
Apple has set up developer boxes with both, Intel- and IBM-PowerPC-processors. They can't have those incredible G5/Intel machines float around, so of course, they want them back after development cycle. Apple has also prepared its own developer suite called Xcode for a smooth transition. A simple check box is suppused to grant output of binary code that works on both, Intel- and PowerPC-processors. And for the users of Mac OS X, Apple installs Rosetta in its next version of the operating system. Rosetta will translate the binary code on the fly, giving a smooth experience of programs starting seemlessly, even if they have not been compiled for OS X running on Intel. Jobs showed off this new function by using both, Photoshop and the Microsoft Office suite on a Mac with Intel inside.
For the past five years, Jobs said, Apple's Mac OS X had been leading a secret shadow life. Yes, there was a building on the Apple campus in which Apple had secretly developed the version of thes system for the day X, the day when they had to make the switch. It was a plan B solution, some people at Apple had never dreamt it would become true one day.
So what's the conclusion. Will this be a good thing for us? I guess that's a question asked too early. One day we might ask though what would have happened if Apple wouldn't have made this important move.
Additional sources:
Prior to the announcement:
Forbes: Why Apple can't embrace Intel
MacNN: Apple-Intel talks intended to pressure IBM
Associated Press: Markets stay strong on Apple-Intel report
Top Tech News: Apple, Intel Rumored To Be in Talks
Wired Magazine: Apple Switching to Intel Chips?
Information Week: The Dream Of x86-Capable Macs Remains Elusive
Macworld: Analysts: Apple, Intel talks probably not about PCs
After the announcement:
Wired Magazine: Jobs Drops Da Intel Bomb
Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 05:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack