The Linux Extremist

It is a beautiful morning in West Sussex. The torrid summer, at long last, appears to be fading, and the sunshine is pleasant rather than oppressive. I got up, looked out over my garden, I heard the birds singing. I got myself a coffee, and then sat at my PC. I typed in a post about my adventures with BSD. Then I switched on the news.

On the news was John Reid, the Home Secretary; he announced a plot had been foiled.  Its intent, he said was “to bring down a number of aircraft through mid-flight explosions causing a considerable loss of life”.

My intial reaction is not repeatable in polite company. My girlfriend travels by air all the time, so it’s not like I’m removed from this. I imagine her reaction is going to be just as livid when she finds out she can’t take hand luggage on the plane any longer, thanks to the terrorists.

That, however, is a minor consideration. Let’s review what the terrorists had in mind, which is very similar to what they did on 9/11. In the name of “Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate”, they intended to seize planes full of innocent men, women and children and kill them all. Unable to strike against military or political targets directly, they intend to make civilians feel unsafe in the hopes they can scare us into submission. Obviously the terrorists didn’t read about what happened when Adolf Hitler tried to bomb London in order to achieve the same aim. Here’s a clue for any terrorists reading: it failed.

What’s inexplicable is that the terrorists should be able to look at Lebanon and see the same thing; Israel hitting Beirut has fuelled defiance, not destroyed it. In Israel’s case, defiance doesn’t matter as they are going after military targets, namely Hezbollah’s infrastructure. In the terrorists’ case, as the aim is destroy our will to fight, they are pursuing means which are counterproductive to their ends. They would be better off trying to create a dance craze which causes hip injuries.

Really, the terrorists are unenlightened, uneducated jerks. Sun Tsu advised in the Art of War to “know thy enemy”; they don’t. Sun Tsu also advised, “know thyself”. I wonder if they have sufficient brain cells to remember their postal codes let alone know who they really are. People who embrace extreme ideologies tend to be those who have a weak hold on their own identity and need to find purpose and meaning in their lives by being told what to do by others.

Given this, I doubt reasoning with these people would achieve anything. So I have a suggestion: unleash Jack Bauer.

All right, I’m speaking as a “24″ junkie; I am operating under the assumption that there is a real life equivalent. However, I do admire the way that Jack Bauer deals with terrorists: I’ve seen him shoot one in the knee, break another’s fingers and use electrical shocks. I’ve seen him shoot terrorists and grab them by the wound to make them talk; this was particularly enjoyable when he did it in Season 2 to a “little rich girl” who was “playing terrorist”. The fictional organisation to which Jack belongs, the Counter Terrorist Unit, also has a specialist in causing pain to suspects.

In the West, we are rightly reticent about using torture; we regard that as the hallmark of barbaric regimes. However it’s clear that the terrorists simply do not have the same scruples that we do; it would seem they regard our reticence as a form of weakness. For example, the terrorists should be just as aggrieved by the treatment of the Muslim minority in China. The difference is, the terrorists know that the Chinese will use Jack Bauer-esque methods or worse to get them to talk, and kill them quietly as a punishment.

Our political leaders could change tactics; they could enable MI5 and the FBI to start doing things the Jack way. I doubt there would be little opposition among the general public. I suspect that they don’t do so because of fear of some very vocal special interest groups. Ironically, it is many of these special interest groups that would be most adversely affected if the terrorists did achieve their aim of global hegemony.

Meanwhile, we should compliment the police and security services in Britain for a job well done in foiling today’s plot. One can only hope that they have the tools, in the absence of a Bauer-esque mandate, to prevent further incidents. Perhaps this latest incident will serve as a reminder that this mandate would be useful.

Everything one needs to know about politics can be found in the scripts of “Yes, Minister”, a British comedy programme which detailed the fictional career of the Right Honourable James Hacker, MP. One of the more pertinent lessons doled out by the show is that politicians will seize upon half-baked initiatives in order to prove to the public they’re doing something. This faulty logic was encapsulated by what one of the characters called “The Politicians Syllogism”. A syllogism, for those who haven’t come across one before, is a form of deductive reasoning, comprised of a major premise, a minor premise and a conclusion. The Politicians Syllogism goes as follows -

We must do something
This is something.
Therefore we must do this.

Of course this is about as good, the character notes, as saying the following -

My dog has four legs.
My cat has four legs.
Therefore, my dog is a cat.

The Politicians Syllogism is applicable to the latest initiative out of the American Congress, the so-called “Deleting Online Predators Act”, or DOPA for short. The act, passed by a margin of 410 votes to 15 in the House of Representatives, intends to forbid schools and libraries access to “social networking” sites. The FCC is obliged to define these sites as any that allow users to chat to another, maintain a profile, and post personal data. Some commentators have already noted that this description would apply to sites like Ebay and Amazon.

The politicians are doing this, quite frankly, because it’s easy. The latest scare created by the media is that MySpace has become nothing more than a recruitment ground for paedophiles. This act is a very simple way to show that both Democrats and Republicans “care”. Doing “something” also prevents questions about why rank and file members of the US Congress are paid $165,200 per year, plus benefits and expenses.

Of course, sending paedophiles for a ride on Old Sparky set to “Extra Crispy” or castrating them with a rusty butter knife would be certainly more effective (it would definitely cut the recidivism rate). However, such measures would not command a bipartisan consensus, and therefore be less likely to pass; “something” would not be achieved.

However, something in this instance is the worst sort of nothing. If we apply Lenin’s old query, “Whom does this benefit?” to the act, we can quickly ascertain that it certainly does not benefit the children the measure is intended to protect.

According to the Pew Internet & Life project, only 23% percent of adult Americans have gone online from somewhere other than home or at work. Even if we assume that children’s proportion is marginally higher, this does not account for the vast majority of internet users. These figures also do not account for people using MySpace at these alternative locations; given the filters already placed on salacious content, the library or school environment was already not conducive for accessing questionable material.

Just as the act is unlikely to benefit users, it is just as likely to hit sites like MySpace and any site that offers an element of social networking. It also hits policy makers in schools and libraries; their independence in deciding what is appropriate material has been taken away and put into the hands of the Federal government. Power has been shifted to the centre, bureaucracy empowered, and there is no solid reasoning behind it.

It also does not benefit good governance. A solid objection to this act is the supposition that it makes about human nature; it seems Congress has read their Jean Jacques Rousseau. Without the acoutrements of civilisation, Rousseau suggested, men automatically behave better. Similiarly, Congress suggests that without the tools to make man bad, he will not become bad. Considering that paedophiles are motivated by unnatural lust, it seems that even if a fraction of their prey were made unavailable, they would not stop in their activities. Only the aforementioned ride in Old Sparky (or the rusty butter knife) would stop them completely; the fear of being stopped in that manner would make some, not all, realise that life is more important than gratifying themselves.

So whom does this benefit? The bureaucracy is the biggest winner, given the additional powers they will receive. Also, Congress will get a few days of a few positive headlines for doing something. Individual representatives, in a tough election year, will be able to tell the folks back home that they tackled the scourge of internet paedophiles, and with a bit of luck, (but not too much luck as the incumbency rate in the House is around 90 percent) they’ll continue to collect their large salaries for a job which demands the occasional loud bit of nothing. One can only hope that the nothing produced in the next session will be of better quality.

It’s very common among Linux enthusiasts to refer to Bill Gates as the “anti-Christ” or “Darth Vader”. I tried an experiment this morning by typing “Darth” and “Bill Gates” into Google. I got 432,000 results pairing the two together.

This seems unfair. First and foremost, Darth Vader is a genuinely entertaining personality and a master of the deadpan remark (e.g., “I find your lack of faith disturbing”), while Bill Gates is about as fun to listen to as an accountant on codeine reciting a poem on the virtues of watching paint dry. What is more is the Sith and Empire have much more in common with the Linux community than the Jedi and Republic.

I can already hear the howls of outrage from science fiction and Linux geeks from one end of the globe to another. “How dare you say such a thing?” they will say - “Microsoft is the evil empire, you’ve said it yourself, Groznii!” However, as a devotee of both Linux and the Dark Side, I can’t draw that conclusion.

Let’s look at the world of Star Wars prior to Episode IV, A New Hope. In Episodes I-III, the galaxy is ruled by the Old Republic, which is shown to be bloated, inefficient, and dysfunctional. Palpatine, while a Senator, says in Episode I, “The Republic is not what it once was. The Senate is full of greedy, squabbling delegates. There is no interest in the common good.” Anakin Skywalker states in Episode II that the system “doesn’t work”. No one disagrees that there is a problem. A large, bloated organisation corrupted by greed and uninterested in the common good sounds rather like Microsoft. This impression is only enhanced by the attempt of the Confederacy of Independent Systems to try to break away; Palpatine, in his role as Chancellor, reaffirms the values of the Republic by being unwilling to allow the Republic to split in two. Padme Amidala may wish to resolve the dispute through negotiations, however she too also does not express any willingness to see the Republic divide. This indicates a rather “closed source” system of governance; rather than allow systems to strike out on their own, the Republic’s politicians are determined to see that member planets adhere to a singularity, the sole question is how much force should be used to preserve it.

In trying to maintain this order, the Jedi are rather like Microsoft’s adherents; they too cannot see an alternative to the Republic. They also cannot conceive of anything outside their rigid ideological framework that might challenge their teachings; they cannot understand the potential of innovation or inspiration to catch them out. For example, Anakin Skywalker was inspired by love for Padme and married her; the Jedi had difficulty imagining that he would disobey their key tenets so blatantly, and it cost them in the end.

In contrast, Palpatine is a figure that could have come out of Bill Gates’ nightmares. He was one man, working largely alone, who had a new idea which was going to sweep everything else aside. Rather like Linux, the Sith idea developed underground. Rather like Linux, having the right apprentices (e.g., other open source projects like Gnome and Firefox) was key. Rather like the Republic’s problems paved the way for the Sith, Microsoft’s weaknesses created the opportunities which Linux has exploited. With a full OS war underway, it appears that Microsoft is losing, particularly in serving up web applications.

The comparisons run deeper. Once Palpatine won, he continued to show an Open Source sense of solving some problems. Rather than maintain control of the Galaxy through the Senate’s single bureaucracy, in Episode IV, Palpatine abolishes it, and gives regional governors direct control, thus freeing them to govern in any way they see fit. Yes, they have to adhere to an overall framework of Empire (which can possibly be construed as Open Standards), but there is no overall single blueprint for how each of these territories is to develop.

Palpatine’s farming out of clone troops to Open Source projects was less successful. Star Wars literature informs us that after the Clone Wars, Stormtroopers were drawn from a mixture of sources, clones of a number of people and non-clone individuals, as well as clones of Jango Fett. Unfortunately as Episode IV shows, new clones which couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn with 50 blaster shots were made en masse; obviously bug checking wasn’t strong enough on Version 2.0 of the Clone Trooper project.

The Sith and Empire’s fate also contain a warning for the Open Source community; they were at their best when innovating to bring down a bloated rival. Once the rival had been destroyed, some level of complacency crept in. While Palpatine’s plans were masterful, he was unable to foresee how the tiniest of elements, namely teddy bears armed with sticks, could cause them to come undone. Open Source needs to maintain momentum and a certain level of comparison to other models lest it fall as well.

Overall, however, the comparison between the Dark Side and those working on Linux appears to contain more commonalities than differences. Perhaps in future people will start claiming that Bill Gates’ thinking is about as backwards as Yoda’s speech patterns, and Linus Torvalds will step up to claim his Sith name; after all, Darth Linux seems a worthy title.

A phenomenon that seems to be profilerating as rapidly as spam is that of online “trolls”, namely, people who go onto bulletin boards and generally make an unpleasant mess of things.

There are a variety of species - some have a particular bugbear about one subject, reminding me of the old saying, “A fanatic is someone who won’t change the subject and won’t change his mind”. Others fall into the “oblivious to the point of insanity” category - this type is unwilling to acknowledge the misery they are creating and simply refuse to let go. Others are those with the “running grievance” - namely, people who carry a personal grudge from board to board about some usually imagined offense.

The internet is a wonderful thing, no doubt, but the anonymity it provides has a disinhibiting effect: those who kept quiet in real life, suddenly found they could speak without fear of consequences. Many times, this has proven to be a good thing. The trolls prove that there are a lot of people who simply should have remained silent.

It’s very easy to fall into the traps that trolls set; usually they say something so outrageous or rude that it goes against the grain not to respond. However, as with spam, trolls should not be encouraged by providing any form of interaction whatsoever. Here are some things to remember which has helped me in the past:

1. No matter what you do, the troll will remain a troll - if someone posts something feverishly unintelligent, it’s unlikely that anything you say will make them smarter.

2. The troll derives pleasure from argument. Remember, trolls are likely people whose lack of interaction in real life is so desperate that being a troll is the only way they can get noticed. By giving them attention, you feed their hunger to be noticed.

3. The troll’s opinion is unimportant. This is often the most difficult point to remember. If you walk away from an argument with a troll, it’s likely they’ll run around in circles yapping like an incontinent chihuahua on amphetamines that they’ve “won” - it’s a tactic to make you get up and argue with them again. Just remember, the troll is likely some 40 year old who is working at Kinko’s making photocopies and the closest thing to a girlfriend he’s had is the copy of Hustler magazine he has stored under his mattress.

4. If you succumb to anger, the troll wins. It is amazing how emotionally satisfying it is to verbally belt a troll. I once said to a Microsoft-loving troll that he was a “scum puking moron” who should be anally violated by a Hell’s Angel called Otto…for starters. I enjoyed that fit of rage, but in the end the troll was oblivious to what I had said. For all the satisfaction I had gained, it hadn’t hurt him a jot.

So what is to be done? The unenviable task of monitoring trolls falls upon the many board administrators out there. Wise ones provide filters so that particular posters can be ignored. Sites that become infested with trolls should simply be abandoned; it’s far better to walk away, start afresh and let the trolls get locked into a civil war over who is the biggest troll of them all.

The worst thing one can do is to engage trolls, either by trying to fire back at them, or by trying to appeal to their better nature (in my experience, they have none). In short, don’t feed the trolls. Hopefully, if people grow ever more savvy about such things, the trolls will end up feeding solely on each other.

A very long time ago, I remember seeing a Garfield the cat cartoon, in which Garfield was holding a cup of coffee and reciting the following little poem:

I love you, coffee, you make me glow
My nerves don’t like you, but what do they know?

As I sit here with my giant Darth Vader mug full of steaming hot java, I feel the same way. I think it is a common feature amongst most technologists to be caffiene fiends - not just coffee, but cola (diet and regular), Mountain Dew, Jolt, Red Bull (sometimes spiked with vodka) - we are all apparently trying to stimulate ourselves to death. A popular technologist t-shirt features a diagram of the caffiene molecule, a sort of symbol among true believers in the Caffiene Cult.

Many of the companies I have worked for have encouraged this religion - I once worked for a dot com in the Netherlands that was not atypical in this regard: they kept a small supply closet choked to the gills with cola, dark roasted coffee and chocolate (which also contains caffiene).

I’m not giving up coffee, but recent health concerns about artificial sweetners mean that I am going to be giving up the diet cola shortly. I found that 2 bottles of Marks and Spencer Diet Cola at lunchtime was having an effect on my short term memory; according to anecdotal evidence, this is likely due to aspertame. All in all, a good time to stop.

That said, it’s been quite a run. Diet cola in 2 litre bottles has been good to me, a constant companion as I learned PHP, MySQL and Linux. I have fond, almost romantic memories of being up so late that even the birds outside were asleep, sitting in front of a glowing screen, writing code, and then taking another swig. Once I’d reached a stage of solution or frustration, usually around 3 AM, I’d fall into bed, and then make myself some more coffee in the morning. Caffiene was there to help me stay awake so I could learn more, process more information, maximise my waking hours and help me cram as much information as possible into my brain.

But perhaps like dot com booms that turn to busts, and Sun becoming a bunch of twerps and youth turning to middle age, that which was fun or even useful can sometimes eventually become destructive. I like to sleep at night. I have a beautiful girlfriend to spend time with now, a much more satisfying companion than a glowing screen and a PHP manual. Things pass, and this includes my membership in the Cult of Caffiene.

Younger technologists can still go for it. They can push themselves and spend late nights learning what is new and cool and relevant. They can still enjoy the surge of caffiene and pretend they’re Brad Dourif playing Piter de Vries in “Dune” by reciting:

It is by will alone, I set my mind in motion
It is by the juice of Sapho the thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stain
The stains become a warning, it is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

It’s all part of learning. However, there comes a point where a stage of learning completes and it’s time to move onto a new lesson. So I’m moving on from learning about being a wild young technologist drunk on Diet Coke, and looking forward to gaining wisdom about the virtues of being sober, respectable and orderly.

Well OK, maybe not.