While attending the Creative Commons Conference ZA I met a man by the name of James Love. He works for an NGO, CPTech and his presentation was on a cunning way to fix the pharmecutical industry. This is a particularly pertinent issue in South Africa and other developing countries such as India and Brazil as pharmecuiticals are getting in the way of cheap AIDS drugs.

There is a really excellent summary of this horrible problem here.

Before the national Debating Competition each member of the delagation is encouraged to write a prep-case. These consist of research into a pertinent issue e.g. Debt relief in Africa and proposed proposition and opposition motions and policies. I wrote a prep case on the medical Innovation Prize fund. After reading this story I decided to clean it up a bit and provided it in non-debater format.

I have just returned from the national Debating Championships, where I didn't have an internet connection and discovered quite a furour over my last post on Sweatshops. This included an allegation that I had:

• Threatened the author with violence. This was based on my ending comment 'Grr, I am so mad.' This was mentioned in a comment to my original post and in comment to a follow up post.
• Initiated a malicious campaign agaist his person.
• Caused one of my readers to send a malicious e-mail to the commentary team.

I am completely and utterly shocked. The author has since apologised. I too would like to apologise. My post, intention and manner seem to have been completely misunderstood. I don't think that much of this misunderstanding is my fault but I apologise if my writing has caused unplesantness. It was never my intention and I think the two events are unrelated.

I would however like a chance to defend myself.

• I am a pacifist. I would never threaten violence on anyone. The "grr" line was an expression of my frustration at the actual argumentation and the authors points, not the author.
• This blog is primarily a computer security blog. I identify with the 'white hat' community and participated in drawing up a code of ethics for our research group, to which I apply. I would never use or advocate the use of malicious tactics such as those mentioned.
• I am a staunch supporter of logic and argumentation. I enjoy a good argument, this is one of the reasons why I just spent a week competing in a debating contest. I was purely responding to the points the author raised and not trying to start a personal vendetta. I was leaving for the competition the next morning and realised I had written the entry in a hurry. Thus, I wanted others to help respond while I was away and to create an awareness of the response.

That photo is taken from my kitchen, you can see my door with the Creative Commons logo on it. The band are called the Blk Jcks (the Black Jacks) and are down from Jo'burg to perform at the National Arts Festival which ended today.

How very random is that? I walk out of my room to find a live band performing in my lounge. There's nothing like making yourself some toast and listening to some music.

This is one of the most horrible pieces of capitalist propaganda I have seen in a long time. What makes it worse is that it comes from South Africa. Please write a response to this and post it on your blog or e-mail it to them or me.

I think there is a lot to argue about. The most obvious flaw is a three-parter:

1. Nike manufactures overseas BECAUSE it is cheaper, even with transport costs, than producing locally. If transport were such an issue, why don't they buy from manufacturers closer, like latin america?
2. Nike chooses countries like Indonesia BECAUSE they have horrible protections of workers rights and are very open to exploitation. If respect for worker rights really were conditions for the contract then why do they keep buying from countries that don't have such protections. SA doesn't have sweat shops because we have strong Unions who wouldn't stand for that and that is why not many Nike shoes come from here.
3. If Nike isn't making a huge profit (we can all tell they are really struggling to make ends meet) and paying workers proper wages in non-sweat shop environments would nullify their profit, then TOUGH. You can't make ends meet by abusing people and then justify it by saying you need to do it to make money!

If you need more resources have a look here or here.

There are a whole bunch of other arguments like some of the government payoffs Nike engages in to keep countries poor and open to exploitation. Not to mention how Union leaders seem to go missing a lot or how all the money Nike is pouring into these countries providing jobs for the unemployed never seems to uplift the country. Surely all of these taxes and wages should have resulted in some tangible local development by now? It becomes obvious why the original article has comments turned off.

Grrr, I am so mad.

Wow, this was quite hectic. My brother is in London at the moment and the fear isn't nice. I want to express sincere condolences to the affected families.

Bruce Schneier makes a plea for people to not do things like, this. Applying security randomly and only in the transit system is silly. Some proper thought needs to be put into it. If I were a terrorist all I need do is bomb a supermarket or the like, while everyone is running around bus and train stations. Security is only worsened by knee-jerk reaction.

Schneier says:

Smart counterterrorism focuses on the terrorists and their funding -- stopping plots regardless of their targets -- and emergency response that limits their damage.

Side note: Wikipedia and Wikinews' coverage has been excellent. It is also far more impartial and less sickening than CNN's money making exercise complete with spiffy new 'London Terror' logo.

One of our local geeks, Kyle Whittington, has put up a blog. In his last entries he has relayed the saga of PuddleTV. I didn't know you could make a narrative out of shell script development, but I found it a very entertaining read. It was kind of like watching a documentary about somthing you do every day, you should be bored, but you aren't, you are sucked in.

Essentailly he threw together a machine out of spare parts, slapped on linux and hacked out some shell scripts to create his own television station running in his digs/commune. Their house is called 'The Puddle', hence the name 'PuddleTV'. He even included adverts made out of his randomly generated hierarchical TV schedule, and local weather information.