Local expertise

[Satanforce]

Time or me to show why Carey's idea is stupid

Three main reasons.

Reason 1

Why does it seem most of what we have is just for posing and not to actually utilize emphasis Satan? We have smartphones and all kinds of tools, but so far we only touch the surface of their capabilities.

Anytime you see someone use the word "utilize", instead of just "use" - beware. It usually means deception, either of self, or of others. Carey says that we need something akin to "Mumble servers, XMPP, IRC, image bins, paste bins, collaborative editors, DVCS, VPN". To do what? Utilize properly? But then he turns around criticizes the masses for "posing" on Facebook. But with all these above Protocols, what have Carey and the JaLUG crowd done? Can they say that any of their meetings , projects and chats in Google Groups have led to anything of meaning in the real world -ie Offnet? What Carey is suggesting weid create another talk shop. A better talk shop, but no different than what HaLUG was doing, and no different than what the Facebook posers are doing. You are merely suggesting a more sophisticated network. And networks are or communication- not creation.

Thus Reason 1 - Its still just Chat.

Reason 2

But just what is "it?" There has not been a single declarative sentence from Carey to tell what it is it that he wants. Of course we have this:

Personally, a long term goal I seek is Village LAN: each community has a network (mesh or other) that can easily be interfaced with other networks.

This is of course, a nonsense. Why would a village, logical, or physical, need a LAN? A LAN is for communication and coordination . If I want to communicate with my village I just go on my phone, on my Facebook, or just go outside. If what Carey wants is a robust communication network that allows for high bandwidth, privacy, simplicity, and most importantly, independence, then he's not going to get that with TCP-IP. He shall have to make up his own protocol. And I'm completely down with that. But right now, Carey is on the wrong Layer. To do something like that requires radical changes in Layer 1 , 3 , 4 and maybe Layer 2 (OSI) protocol design, perhaps the use self-synchronize code instead of a preamble at the Data Link Layer, the use of amateur Radio bands to transmit packet radio over UHF, or the use high power LEDs (at night) to cloudbounce high bandwidth data at the EHF (300GHz!). This would be excellent for things like disaster relief for example. But this creates a contradiction with Carey's dream of decentralization.

In order to set up any sophisticated system, you will need excerpts. If you have experts, you will then have a hierarchy - based on knowledge of course. And if you have hierarchy, you have bosses. A technocracy, sure, but both Communist China and Soviet Russia are/were dominated by technocrats . Therefore, decentralized networks are impossible. They always revert to hierarchies. Let us look at one of the most Utopian of these peer to peer networks, that is, Bittorrent. Peers are persons who are equals, right? Well how come we have people bawling out in comments sections "Please SEED!" Hell, if we both create the same torrent, and your upload speed is 100 k , and mine is one meg, then we've created a hierarchy based upon bandwidth, haven't we? And if someone else takes my torrent, and puts it on his seedbox, then all our hard work in making that torrent was for nothing, amirite?

In other words any attempts to destroy a hierarchical system will only put another one its place. The question is not how to get rid of hierarchies, but on how to control them. We will always have leaders. We just need to find ways to keep them in line.

Thus Reason 2 - Decentralization in an organization is an impossibility, especially one with protocols such as TCP-IP. Talk about decentralization just leads to meaningless chatter about imaginary projects.

Reeason 3 when I am less tired.

[gW33Zy]

Wow!... erm, Wo... just WOW!
@the_advocate... What a way yuh siddung an' brood an' contemplate ways and means fi kick dung di young man's idea.
One whole 'clawt month... yuh bitta bad!

The people around you must look upon you as a beacon of hope and inspiration in their dark and dreary lives.

[Satanforce]

OK, I'm less tired now.

Wow!... erm, Wo... just WOW!
@the_advocate... What a way yuh siddung an' brood an' contemplate ways and means fi kick dung di young man's idea.
One whole 'clawt month... yuh bitta bad!

The people around you must look upon you as a beacon of hope and inspiration in their dark and dreary lives.

Hey, been doing some overtime. Need taht money, after all, electronics labs don't buy themselves. Also, I don't hear anything from you saying just why my reasons are wrong. Moving on to reason 3 and conclusion.

Reason 3

gW33Zy says that I'm knocking down Carey's ideas. And just what idea is that? I had asked him some questions:

1. Who are you/we?
2. What are we doing here?
3. What is it that we are trying accomplish?
4. What resources will we use to accomplish this/these?

To which he answered:

1. Anyone who is interested in developing something useful to themselves or/and others.
2. Same thing we usually do on Techjamaica.com forums, but with more interactivity and enhanced collaboration.
3,4. We are trying to make use of local resources and reduce dependence on resources that are out of our control.

1, 3, and 4 are so general as to be useless. As for 2, there are better ways to discuss League of Legends, the latest cell phones, and complain about customs. But both the structure and the meaning of the above quoted answer from Carey reveal a deeper problem with Our Local Expertise. Read through the answer again. Doesn't it sound like the same management-speak gobbledy-gook, that gets foisted upon us through work e-mails and memos? I believe that it is because that Carey, like myself, and I suspect like many here, are computer experts in name only. We are actually managers, trained to administer Management Information Systems - But not to create them, or even to question who such systems control our society. Even if you were not trained at UCC or the completely SOBA-fied UTech Computer Science program, the language and procedures of management has so pervaded our society that we feel that it is normal, even though it is a perversion of the ideals that I and (yes) the Open Sourcers hold dear.

Think about it - how may 5000 - line open source projects have been posted on TechJamaica? How much examination off samples off source code takes place , so that the code may be modified? Any cool projects with OpenGL, SDL, or other open source graphics library posted up on here I don't see any. And there is not likely to be any, because we simply lack the necessary local expertise to carry out serious medium- to large scale projects. How many of downloaded that , or watched that MIT SICP lecture series and just gave up? Any one made it to map and reduce?

We should meet up JaLUG style - but instead of worshipping the great Linus Christ, we should have the ones who can code and do electronics run training in Python, Event -driven management, GUI creation, and basic soldering/electronics.

Reason 3 - we barely have any local expertise.

Conclusion after dinner, and after I finishing studying.

[wiel]

OK, I'm less tired now.



Hey, been doing some overtime. Need taht money, after all, electronics labs don't buy themselves. Also, I don't hear anything from you saying just why my reasons are wrong. Moving on to reason 3 and conclusion.

Reason 3

gW33Zy says that I'm knocking down Carey's ideas. And just what idea is that? I had asked him some questions:



To which he answered:



1, 3, and 4 are so general as to be useless. As for 2, there are better ways to discuss League of Legends, the latest cell phones, and complain about customs. But both the structure and the meaning of the above quoted answer from Carey reveal a deeper problem with Our Local Expertise. Read through the answer again. Doesn't it sound like the same management-speak gobbledy-gook, that gets foisted upon us through work e-mails and memos? I believe that it is because that Carey, like myself, and I suspect like many here, are computer experts in name only. We are actually managers, trained to administer Management Information Systems - But not to create them, or even to question who such systems control our society. Even if you were not trained at UCC or the completely SOBA-fied UTech Computer Science program, the language and procedures of management has so pervaded our society that we feel that it is normal, even though it is a perversion of the ideals that I and (yes) the Open Sourcers hold dear.

Think about it - how may 5000 - line open source projects have been posted on TechJamaica? How much examination off samples off source code takes place , so that the code may be modified? Any cool projects with OpenGL, SDL, or other open source graphics library posted up on here I don't see any. And there is not likely to be any, because we simply lack the necessary local expertise to carry out serious medium- to large scale projects. How many of downloaded that , or watched that MIT SICP lecture series and just gave up? Any one made it to map and reduce?

We should meet up JaLUG style - but instead of worshipping the great Linus Christ, we should have the ones who can code and do electronics run training in Python, Event -driven management, GUI creation, and basic soldering/electronics.

Reason 3 - we barely have any local expertise.

Conclusion after dinner, and after I finishing studying.

I did start SICP but I gave up because it seemed like a waste of time and I wanted to do so much more with my time. did you finish it? did you achieve satori? SICP requires too much mathematical domain knowledge and there are better books out there that teach the same thing without all the math. Our high schools don't start calculus as early as the United States high schools do so don't buy into all the elitist talk you see on amazon.

as for open source projects posted here I only remember one:
http://www.techjamaica.com/forums/sh...source-project

and some expertise:

I remember talk of game development
http://www.techjamaica.com/forums/sh...059#post771059

http://owensoft.net/project/newogame/

I wouldn't say that there isnt a lot of local expertise here. you probably got that impression from seeing a lot of people around you who can't code at school. They were probably following a trend but they werent motivated to spend the time to learn how to code. its something we are all capable of doing. we arent conjuring spells like in that SICP book.

[Satanforce]

I did start SICP but I gave up because it seemed like a waste of time and I wanted to do so much more with my time. did you finish it? did you achieve satori? SICP requires too much mathematical domain knowledge and there are better books out there that teach the same thing without all the math. Our high schools don't start calculus as early as the United States high schools do so don't buy into all the elitist talk you see on amazon.

as for open source projects posted here I only remember one:
http://www.techjamaica.com/forums/sh...source-project

and some expertise:

I remember talk of game development
http://www.techjamaica.com/forums/sh...059#post771059

http://owensoft.net/project/newogame/

I wouldn't say that there isnt a lot of local expertise here. you probably got that impression from seeing a lot of people around you who can't code at school. They were probably following a trend but they werent motivated to spend the time to learn how to code. its something we are all capable of doing. we arent conjuring spells like in that SICP book.

Oh hell no I didn't finish SICP - but I took up Learn Python the Hard Way and How to Design Programs (Racket/Scheme). I'm getting good, but I'm not where I want to be yet. Its not so much Amazon elitism, the simple lack of output in general from us Jamaicans. Even if you compare the Mobile and Gaming rooms on this forum to the quantity of output on the Development room, and you cannot deny that interest in even basic System Developer is not up to par. Face it, this is Admin country , not developer country. You yourself could onl dredge up 3 examples. And how long have computers been in Jamaica for?

Carey wondered why there was no Jamaican version of Linux (like that matters smh). Well, lots of people can administer Linux, but how many sit down at night going through the source? Yes, you can blame this on the lack of motivation amongst members and students, but why? Of course, there are fundamental problems with our tertiary level education system that will be mentioned later.

Tell you what, if you can tell me about some cons, or some coding marathons that have taken place recently, then fine, I might change my mind . Till then, I remain unconvinced.

[datdread]

...there are fundamental problems with our tertiary level education system that will be mentioned later.

I am interested in hearing more about this. Please go on. Not being sarcastic.

[owen]

@Satanforce aren't you being a bit harsh dumping all the troubles of the world on his thread? I am sure he is not a social media marketer looking to make another facebook group. lolz

[Satanforce]

Yes Owen , it does sound harsh, but I feel that is the only way I could have gotten my point across honestly. It would have been hard for me to be honest without condemning some of the previous ideas and strategies that had been used. I also feel that it is important to acknowledge that there are fundamental cultural and educational problems unique to Jamaica that will seriously hamper any technical undertaking that Carey (or I) may want to attempt. These local problems are not Carey's fault of course, but are systemic, leading to Reason 2 and 3. However , I honestly belive that these problems can be overcome within one summer, if, amongst a group of 12 to 22 people.

[matronyx]

Go for it Carey. People will support it.

[Satanforce]

I am interested in hearing more about this. Please go on. Not being sarcastic.

That will need its own post. I'll have to put it on my blog, when I find the time.