My friend Tarek is doing a daily cartoon strip for an English language newspaper in Cairo. I seem to have made a couple of guest appearances: here and here.

Trent Reznor seems to be becoming a Linux Torvalds. By offering his latest album on the web for free and then inviting people to remix it and send him back their efforts, which he then releases as ‘official’ albums, the parallels with Linux kernel development seem clear. A creative commons license rather than a GPL but the methodology is identical.

Due to my protestant work ethic, when not in class, I spend most of my time in the library studying. Last term this meant I did not attend many of the lunch time talks from famous politicians, visiting academics or NGOs that occur almost every day on campus. I tried to rectify this somewhat this term, which has been made easier by my doing fewer classes. I’ve attended talks or conferences on the status of Middle Eastern studies, the state of Just War legal theories, Iranian politics and theories of Chinese International Relations but unfortunately missed Brahimi, Brzezinski and various ambassadors.

However today, I went to a lunch time talk with boy called Shin Dong-Hyuk. Shin was born in a concentration camp in North Korea and lived in this camp until the age of 23. He knew nothing of the outside world until he managed to escape and make his way into China and then onto South Korea 3 years ago. He has just written a book and is touring the US currently with an organisation called LINK. Listening to him describe his experiences and having the chance to ask him a few question was extraordinary. Without being facetious, it was as close as one gets to meeting someone from a different planet. Until he left the camp, he had no idea of anything beyond the walls of the camp. He had barely heard of Kim Jong-Il to say nothing of countries outside of Korea. The life he described was a combination of Orwell and Auschwitz. I was horrified to hear that he was kept under supervision by the government of South Korea for 6 months, while they confirmed that he was indeed from North Korea, but that they barely provided any transitional support at all. The centre they have for the (re-?) patriotation of North Koreans has 1 psychiatrist for 500 occupants. Meeting him today was truly a humbling and affecting experience.

If you want to read more about his life, there is a brief excerpt from this book here.

I am frequently asked why I decided to move from IT to study politics and one of the answers I give is that I listen to my bookshelf, as it usually represents my passions. 13 years ago my bookshelf was full of hacking, Linux and networking O’Reilly books. Over time, as a result of the reading time traveling for Claranet provided, my bookshelf morphed into books on the Middle East and International Relations theory. I followed my passions once before and had a reasonably successful career on the back of it, and so, I tell people that I am following my passions once again and seeing where it leads. Shortly before my 3rd Google interview, I decided that I really should follow through on this. I have started off down a new track, and while there will be opportunities for me to return to IT, the timing will be never be more suitable for me to explore my new track. The visa and money temptation of Google are also not as significant as I thought. Upon investigation, a visa for work in the non-profit sector is slightly easier to procure than I thought and as for the money… well I think I can lead an ascetic lifestyle for a bit.

Which is just as well as I flunked the 3rd interview with Google. I had an awful night’s sleep the evening before, as a result of pulling a muscle in the gym, [Yes - you read that right. I now go twice a week to the gym] and was off form but struggling through an explanation of TCP Syn Cookies, realised that my brain is just not in gear for IT stuff at the moment. I do enjoy it but the synapses are wired for Balance of Power not IP headers.

As previously mentioned, I had been offered a position with POMED which, despite being in DC, was very attractive for its activities and opportunities. But I also received an offer from an organisation called the Independent Diplomat, another interesting group setup by an ex-UK foreign office fellow who, with some financial assistance from George Soros, set up a consulting firm who advise political parties who are seeking independence, such as, until their recent success, the Kosovans. Based in New York, this was also an unpaid internship but would also provide me with some exposure to the political world, specifically at the United Nations. So - stay in New York and enjoy myself here a little longer or shwitz in DC for the summer and miss out on working with a good group?

Facing a Kobayashi Maru situation with both offers, I pulled my Captain Kirk manoeuvre and decided to do both of them. So, I start work on June 2nd for the Independent Diplomat and then move to DC in September for 3 months with POMED. This is going to eat into my savings much more than I thought but I am trying to see it as an investment. I will add some good organisations to my CV and then if no full time positions manifest themselves here in the US, I wil come away feeling I have given it my best shot and look to return to IT (although one other option might be worth pursuing…)

I am really excited to be staying in New York over the summer. It will mean I get to do a full year here and add a nice coda to my time at university. The Political Science department at school had an all day conference on Friday where 2nd year PhD students had to present papers and I was asked by a friend whether it had whetted my appetite to continue studying. I think it has. I have enjoyed my year at Columbia so very much and have been intellectually challenged and am going to leave with an itch which has been scratched but… not totally. I am not sure I am PhD material but you never know. As another friend said today over lunch, when listening to my enthusiastic accounts of Friday’s conference, I have got the bug.  But equally, I am looking forward to being part of a working environment again.

But until then, I have 2 weeks more studying to do before finals exams and then hopefully can look forward to my graduation ceremony which my mother is flying over to attend..

An interesting article on working for large tech companies versus start ups:   http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html

The password to the preceding entry is what I was dressed up as when I had my run in with the armed police last year. Should you not know the answer, please email me.

Thanks to Mopflite for the link to the following article about the problems with Facebook

Now, ignore the Luddite bashing at the opening and the unsubstantiated, pejorative use of the phrase neo-con, when I suspect, at most, he means neo-liberal.

The issue is about privacy. There is something very insidious and disturbing about Facebook. Prof. Moglen, whose course I took last semester, explained it very well and unfortunately, I am not eloquent enough to replay his comments, and unfortunately neither does this article, whose tone is a little too knee jerk. But the author does pick up on the unsettling, disquieting issue that some of us feel about Facebook.

As Prof. Moglen said the parasite when it lands on you, sends a mild, brief anaesthetic so you don’t notice the next step, which is the extraction of blood. As with the Beacon service, push the proboscis in too quickly, and the host reacts.

Social networking is wonderful, one of the great activities the internet has delivered us. However, there is a right way to do it and a wrong way. The right way, such as file sharing, works when it is properly distributed, decentralised and truly autonomous. Facebook is none of these things. Peel away the Web 2.0 pseudo-openness and the fun of interacting with friends, and there is still someone there controlling it, no different to Microsoft or Google, and getting something out of your using it.

Hopefully, some other new wonder will come along and take away everyone’s attention from Facebook, as with MySpace before it, but there will still be a lingering sense that the majority of users, and this includes geeks, are still not really cognisant of the issues of online privacy. Being such a new medium, users still suffer from cognitive dissonance when it comes to privacy of data.

The default setting is “I have nothing to hide and there is no cost to my giving my personal information away freely.” Yet you absolutely do not know how your data is going to be used and once you submit your data, there is no way of getting it back. We assume there is no cost to giving away our data because we do not, currently, directly feel the cost. Yet to assume there is not, never will be and can’t be one is erroneous. And herein lies the cognitive dissonance. The default setting should be “I will give no data except for a limited, controlled set when I know exactly how it will be used”.

There is a large experiment going on with users and their data, and the usual code of ethics surrounding experiments is subjugated when users click on “I agree to the Terms and Conditions and have read the privacy policy” when they haven’t.

Update: Just found this blog entry by a fellow who was in the Moglen class I audited. I remember asking Tim O’Reilly in 2002 whether a GPL for user contributed data was needed, to which he replied “no”. I seem to remember thinking that he had not understood my question.

On the left, we have the French. The bowl is typically devoid of water and raised so as to be as close to the posterior of the user as possible. The overall effect is that the experience has not really progressed from a primitive state of nature, which is further emphasised by the frequency which one encounters the ‘Turkish’ style in bistros and cafés. However, the utter absence of water until the flush is engaged is perhaps a statement of the poor French economy. Water cannot be spared until it is absolutely necessary to engage it in a perfunctory cleansing action. The effect, as my ex-colleague Stephen Richards commented, is that one feels you are staring at a dead, battered seal when one has finished. Fraternité indeed.

On the right, the Americans. The triumphant success of free market economics means the deep, voluminous bowl should look like a bath that one only belatedly remembered to turn the taps off to (or should that be fawcets?). Our cup overrunneth. A small, sliver of enamel will be left to provide something for the European male to aim at but otherwise, the abundance of water helps to advertise to everyone in earshot the activities of the user. An act of nature has become a commercial for the lavish, liquid luxury of the American lifestyle. Listen to me, the plumbing screams, as I prove how careless we can be with water.

Britain truly does bridge the Atlantic from the Continent like a plumbing Goldilocks. Water, not too much, not too little, but just enough. A bowl which does the job with calm detachment and understated pride. God bless you, Blighty.