1.3. The Technology shock.

In this section we are going to prepare you for the sock before you enter wonderland!

Section quotes:

• "Concept, n.: Any 'idea' for which an outside consultant billed you more than $25,000."
      -- Found on 'fortune-mod'
• "A consultant is a person who borrows your watch, tells you what time it is, pockets the watch, and sends you a bill for it."
      -- Found on 'fortune-mod'
• "The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is a constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read."
      -- Alberto Moravia
• "An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing."
      -- found on 'fortune-mod'.
• "Poor popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience."
      -- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
• "The UNIX philosophy basically involves giving you enough rope to hang yourself. And then a couple of feet more, just to be sure."
      -- Miquel van Smoorenburg
• "The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by people who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried anything."
      -- Jim Joyce, owner of Jim Joyce's UNIX Bookstore
• "Some say the learning curve is steep, but you only have to climb it once."
      -- Karl Lehenbauer.
• "Going from XYZ(other system) to Linux is like trading a glider for an F117."
      -- Lawrence Foard.

Section contents:

• 1.3.1. One world not two.
• 1.3.2. The shock.
• 1.3.3. Pseudo experts.

1.3.1. One world not two.

The free software sunrise was the declaration of collapse the wall between High super technology and consumptive technology, before and since the 1970's there are super computers and it's related software that are monopolized by a few countries and it's forbidden to export high technology, because they think that having it available to many people, one could discover some exploits and he may use it to compromise critical servers. All what you (specially if you live in third world) know is from the commercial consumptive world, all expert and all universites, as the third world proverb says "if it is not yours don't count it". The different between them is not just in power but it's from the way files are named to how they are protected.

When the idea of free software, people think only unemployed programmers do that to find jobs in closed source companies, surprisingly, GNU was the highest heavy weight technology, GNU volunteers was researchers, university professors and hackers. For example the encryption method specified by US Government Federal Information Processing Standards(FIPS 46-3) as published by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), this method is called Data Encryption Standars (DES), this is very week method compared to the one used in the free GNU systems, now NIST forbids using DES on US Government servers. The American National Security Agency (see www.nsa.gov) develops a special Linux kernel in a project called Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux), since Linux is GPL'ed then this project is also GPL'ed (free and open source) any one in the world can use the the American National Security Agency's Security Enhanced Linux, Linus has integrated it in the 2.6 Linux kernel. Many Linux dirstributions (like RedHat Linux and SuSE) has US Department of Defence (DoD) approval and could be installed on sensitive servers. Now the world largest super computer (and the second) is powered by Linux. The reason of all this trust is the philosophy of free software that all the world see the source, so there is no on purpose bugs or spies, and there will be lesser probability that there are mistakes, any one without permission of any someone else could fix it. Source code is what the computer understand and execute and human can read, security is not based on the assumption that criminals don't know how it works.

1.3.2. The shock.

What we just mention is not a shock, it's a good thing, that poor third world countries could get high technology but the shock is that they can't use it since most expert are from the consumptive world (few real expert are returned migrated minds). Open source are distributed in source code form which is not ready to be runned and need to be compiled. Decision makers,and media in third world are pseudo experts from consumptive world, we have very large literate experts.

Users in third world is not used to name things based on their function or what they are, but on their commercial name, few people ask for cola but many ask for 'Pepsi' even when they want 'Coca-cola', in other words users in third words does not know words like 'Web browser','Text editor','Word processor',...etc they know the corresponding commercial products. More over they have wrong names for example they may consider 'Bad sector' a virus, and call the Compact disk a tape, and they say 'my brother had programmed a game for me' when they mean 'he had installed it'.

1.3.3. Pseudo experts.

The third world problem is not having small/large number of literate experts but that they have effect on decision makers, for example in one of the educational TV programs the presenter said 'we are going to make a magnet, get a plastic ruler and paper!', another example can be found on 9th grade(for a 15 years old child) computer book which look like an advertising magazine, on how to install software, students learn to "find a program called setup then run it and then press 'I agree'" , where on earth someone agree a license without reading it first, and how a 15 years old child agrees to take legal responsibility, another expert said 'The first personal computer is made by Microsoft' (seems that he does not know the difference between software and hardware), another exppert wrote an article on a famous Arabic newspaper just before year 2000, he wrote: 'The Y2K problem will happen because computer saves date in only two digits,so 2000 becomes 00 then the computer feels that history is moving backword from 99 to 00 and thus it gets confused and do wrong calculations and this may result a virus and fire may go on your monitor.' well who says that computers have feelings,do comparisons they are not asked to do, and generate viruses by itself and how this is related to to the monitor synchronize circuit. Another expert on one of Arabian governmental TV's discussed operating systems history said " The first OS was DOS by Microsoft corporation , then they produce Windows 3.1, and in 1995 they produce Windows 95, (...) Linux corporation produce RedHat system and Lindows corporation produce LindowsOS which is a combination between the power of Linux and easy of Windows" we have at least 7 mistakes: The first one, DOS was not from Microsoft it was from IBM from the first versions to DOS 3.0 then Microsoft produce it's first DOS and it was DOS 3.1. the second one, DOS was not the first OS, before 20 years there was UNIX sysV and it was not the first, the third one Windows 3.1 is not an OS, the fourth one Windows 95 was not produced in 1995 it was produced in 1993 and released from courtrooms in 1995, the fifth one, Linux is not a company any one should notice the .ORG in all kernel.ORG, linux.ORG, fsf.ORG, and gnu.ORG, the sixth one, RedHat is not a version or release of Linux, RedHat is a company (and a distribution), the seventh one, LindowsOS is not an OS that combine codes from Linux with codes from Microsoft! it's a normal Linux distribution with Windows look and feel and 'wine' preinstalled.

Don't laugh, we are illiterates who can read, if in a program 'cancel' becomes 'dismiss' then the program is considered difficult. We see things as we expect and as we wish not as they are, we believe advertisements and we don't believe the source, did you know now where did those experts get their information from.