Ubuntu phone OS: a glimpse of the future

I came late to the laptop world. A couple of years into my first job I inherited a battered portable machine from a senior colleague. It weighted over 3 Kg and had a 14 inch screen, but had a profound impact on my relation with computers. It had all the CPU power I needed for my work and in a backpack it could be carried everywhere. Beyond that, at home I could use it to read books, or I could plug it to the Hi-Fi or the TV and use it as a CD/DVD player. Soon I understood that I'd never buy a desktop computer again.

That was some 10 years ago, and this past week I got the same feeling again. With the relatively surprising announcement of the Ubuntu phone OS I'm pretty sure I wont buy a laptop again. A new age in personal computing is dawning and Ubuntu seems to be riding on the crest of the wave. Below the fold is the video announcement of this new OS by Mark Shuttleworth, something that might have a serious impact on personal computing in the following decade.

Obituary - Huw Lloyd Langton

I learnt yesterday that one of my favourite guitar players passed away. Huw Lloyd Langton got notorious through his work with Hawkwind, a collaboration that spanned a good number of decades. Master of spacey reverbs and long improvisations, he could create dense atmospheres but still produce songs for more straightforward listeners. I never had the opportunity to see Huw playing live, and now I'm sure I never will. Folk that worked with him paint a personality of kindness and openness, someone pleasant to do music with. Good bye Huw, you'll be missed.

Petition for a Better Ubuntu

In this post I introduce an online petition addressed at Canonical requesting the removal from Ubuntu of all default data collection features. The following paragraphs detail a bit further the reasoning that lead me to create this petition. To immediately read and sign the Petition for a Better Ubuntu, please jump to Avaaz.

Not much has happened since I reported on the potential incompatibilities of Ubuntu 12.10 with the European data protection legislation. At the time I got the impression Canonical was not even in tune to personal data protection and the company remained almost silent on the issue, avoiding to address it directly. I find this somewhat strange, for Mark Shuttleworth, the company CEO founder, claimed to have the root password of all Ubuntu users some good weeks before that. When Ubuntu 12.10 was officially released it portrayed an important small change to the Shopping Lens, the addition of a privacy policy note. It addresses some of the concerns I raised, but at the same time confirms that personal user data is being collected and stored by Canonical. This is the crux of the matter and Ubuntu 12.10 effectively does it without user consent.

Update: The text of this petition has been kindly translated into French by Vince.

The MUSIC project

Muse brings Peak Oil to the mainstream

Muse is a modern British progressive rock band, one of an handful that has harnessed commercial success during the past decade. They rank 9th in my Last.fm top, although time wise they just nearly make it into the top 25. The band released a new LP, the sixth of their career, about 2 months ago. So far I've been too busy to lend any attention to it, although friends already referenced it as well worth listen.

Thanks to our galician friends at Véspera de Nada I found out today that this LP is actually a reflection on the energy sustainability of modern society. Here's the trailer of The 2nd Law

Alternative materials

Part of the use modern industrial society gives to energy is to gather and synthesise disperse matter into complex materials. Due to their solid state and relative stability at room conditions, metals have always had a central role in industrial societies. The processes of mining, transport, refining and casting are vital in the modern economy and demand huge quantities of energy. And this energy demand is proportional to scarcity and dispersion of the raw material in the Earth's crust. There's an interesting post by Ugo Bardi on this matter for a deeper review.

The energy transition modern societies are undergoing today can also be (and most likely will be) a transition into a different way of using matter. A possibility that has been explorer since the 1960s is the usage of carbon fibre composites to replace metals in a variety of applications. Strong and light, they have been promising a new Industrial Revolution for a long time. But while carbon fibres dispense much of the energy consumption of mining and refining processes, they still require relevant amounts of energy in its fabrication process; barring relevant innovation on this aspect, carbon fibre won't become an everyday material.

It so happens that Nature itself fabricates materials not that different from carbon fibre reinforced polymers. Trees produce their own polymers, cellulose and lignen, that are bound together into a material that has great resistance to compression and tension: wood.

Legal questions on the Ubuntu Shopping Lens

Several developments have followed the announcement of the default inclusion of the Shopping Lens feature in Ubuntu 12.10. What seemed at first a surreptitious inclusion of adware in Ubuntu turned into a full blown row when Mark Shutleworth, founder of Canonical, the company that coordinates the Ubuntu development, lit afire the blogosphere claiming that the company had administrative access to every computer running Ubuntu. From there we got to know that even the users that could benefit from the feature are not happy, since the results can not be filtered or customised. A further consequence of this is the possibility of adult oriented products showing up in the results, which puts at risk Ubuntu's usage by children and in professional environments. Answering to all the backlash, Canonical has decided to include settings that allow the user to switch off the Shopping Lens, but it will still be switched on by default.

Actually, this may be just the tip of the iceberg. The inclusion of this commercial oriented feature, more over by default, has the potential to open an unheard of conflict in the FOSS universe.

Update:In consequence of the questions raised in this post I created a petition addressed at Canonical requesting the removal of automatic data collection features.