Monthly Archives: July 2017

The Next Page: The change Homestead wrought – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Posted: July 8, 2017 at 4:07 am


Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Next Page: The change Homestead wrought
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
They feared wage slavery enforced by low pay and debt as a more subtle form of chattel slavery. Like freed slaves in the postwar South, who were subjugated by voter suppression and Jim Crow segregation, free labor in the North was being ...

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The Next Page: The change Homestead wrought - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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Rev. Kevin Johnson: Re-entrants need a second chance – The Philadelphia Tribune

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America is the land of the second chance, and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.

President George W. Bush

Michelle Alexander is correct: The new slavery is the prison industrial complex.

Noted in Alexanders best selling book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, more African Americans are under correctional control today than were enslaved in 1850.

According to the Philadelphia Department of Prisons, the annual cost to incarcerate one person in Pennsylvania is $840 a week, which is $43,680 annually this amount is equal to a life-sustaining salary.

The fiscal burden of incarcerating people at this expense is taxing on our communities, particularly impoverished communities because they are losing members to the prison system the most. When they become absent from the community, they are unable to do their part to sustain and grow the community.

To that end, the City of Philadelphia has invested $6 million in an initiative aimed to reduce the citys prison population by 34 percent in three years.

This will be achieved by creating programs to expedite the release process, working with nonviolent offenders to keep them out of the system and creating alternative methods to rehabilitate people other than imprisonment.

For instance, a third of the countys prison population is detained for minor traffic violations and probation violations. There are more cost-effective ways to penalize people for such offenses and it is a heavy burden putting the onus on taxpayers to bear the exuberant expense of incarcerating minor offenders.

The Washington Post examined the racial disparities at each level in the criminal justice system and discovered that every aspect of the system from arrest rates and bail amounts, to probation time and sentencing showed inconsistencies in the outcomes based on race.

Per the Philadelphia Department of Prisons in January nine in 10 of those in prison are men. Of that number, seven in 10 are African-American men.

This study shows that Blacks are arrested at twice the rate of whites for comparable offenses.

Being a person of color is already challenging enough because of the disparities in opportunities that are associated with being Black. This bias coupled with being an ex-offender can be life-crippling.

When people enter the prison, it becomes systemic. Re-entering society is a challenge because employment becomes an issue.

In Philadelphia, the recidivism rate is 65 percent and the three-year reincarcerated rate is 41.1 percent. This is largely attributed to the lack of jobs that are available to re-entrants.

As president and CEO of Philadelphia OIC, some of our students are re-entrants to society, looking for an opportunity to earn a life-sustaining wage. We teach them that if they possess the drive and determination, then they have the wherewithal to overcome their setback.

We are working directly with our national office, OIC of America, and other satellite OIC offices across the country to solve this complex issue and provide an opportunity for people to acquire industry-recognized credentials to obtain a life-sustaining job. We realize that we must tackle this issue at its core to keep people out of the prison system.

And, it is only then that they will be able to truly re-enter the working world and reach their full potential. As David Millar said, People do make mistakes, and I think they should be punished. But they should be forgiven and given the opportunity for a second chance. We are human beings.

As always, keep the faith!

Kevin R. Johnson, Ed.D. is president and CEO of the Philadelphia OIC, and the lead pastor of Dare to Imagine Church, 6611 Ardleigh St., Philadelphia, PA, d2ic.org. Follow him on Twitter @drkrj.

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Nations take a step away from the threat of nuclear annihilation – CNN

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The United States government opposed the historic UN vote for a new treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons, but that was a knee-jerk response, grounded in last century's reflexes. Today, the path forward to total abolition of these weapons is open even as, ironically, the danger of nuclear war is greater than it has been since the worst days of the Cold War. The United States and Russia hold more than 90% of the world's nuclear weapons, with about 7,000 each. The other nuclear-armed states have smaller arsenals by comparison. None of the nuclear-armed states were among the 120 nations who voted to declare these weapons illegal. But if the United States is serious about seeking the security of a world free of nuclear weapons, then it should have been the first to vote "yes" on the ban.

For decades the US has instead based its security policy on the theory of nuclear deterrence an untested belief that nuclear weapons are so terrible that they keep one nuclear-armed country from attacking any other, for fear of mutual destruction.

Is there any reason to believe such tragically flawed logic from the 19th century will work out better in the 21st? More likely, nuclear weapons, those "peace-producing and peace-retaining terrors," are simply another horror that given time will grow mundane and familiar until eventually they are used, this time perhaps in a war that destroys humankind.

And yet we continue to base our security on these "peace-retaining terrors."

A core assumption of this deterrence theory is that the nuclear-armed states will be led by calm, collected, and well-informed people, who will infallibly respond to crises in a rational fashion.

It is not enough, however, to get this particularly unqualified finger off the button. We need to get rid of the button itself.

Just consider whether anyone could be calm, collected, and reasonable after, say, a nuclear explosion destroys Moscow. It might not be clear for days whether such a disaster was caused by a terrorist, a foreign power, or a domestic accident. As this was being investigated, would the world likely be dealing with a calm, matter-of-fact Russian nation? How quickly might things spin out of control?

The treaty is in some ways a cry of frustration from the rest of the world. The United States, Russia, and other nuclear-armed nations promised more than 37 years ago to work toward total disarmament. That was the bargain of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: We pledged to get rid of our nuclear weapons, in return for others pledging not to seek them.

Yes, the United States can try to ignore this. But as with treaties banning land mines and cluster munitions, declaring nuclear weapons illegal creates a new international norm. It is also a pointed reminder that the US is long overdue to honor a legally-binding promise made 37 years ago to get rid of all of its nuclear weapons.

The new treaty is a call to action, and we should all answer it.

The next step will be to negotiate a convention among the nine nuclear-armed states to abolish these weapons, which as of today are illegal, and have always been immoral. It will not be easy. Such an abolition agreement will have to include a firm timetable for dismantling weapons, involve rigorous verification and enforcement provisions, and satisfy the legitimate security needs of concerned states from Israel to Pakistan.

There is no guarantee we will succeed in this effort. But there is no real alternative to trying, other than wishful thinking that our good luck can last forever. Until we eliminate nuclear weapons, we are living on borrowed time.

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Nations take a step away from the threat of nuclear annihilation - CNN

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Young people check their privilege and feel deeply disappointed – Spectator.co.uk (blog)

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Who would want be a member of Generation Z? Having your every youthful screw-up tracked and recorded on social media, facing the robot job apocalypse and without a lollys chance in hell of ever owning a home in London even if medical advancements allow them to work until theyre 200. To top things off, theyre saddled with years of student debt after their three years learning about Whiteness and Privilege at university. As the Guardianputs it:

Studentsfrom the poorest 40% of families entering university in England for the first time this September will emerge with an average debt of around 57,000, according to a new analysis by a leading economic thinktank.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies said the abolition of the last maintenance grants in 2015 had disproportionately affected the poorest, while students from the richest 30% of households would run up lower average borrowings of 43,000.

Well, its not so clear cut, as Martin Lewis explains:

The real problem is the cost of housing, which puts a huge strain on peoples income throughout their 20s and 30s and without which student debt would be manageable.

Labour want to scrap tuition fees although, along with quite a few popular policies these days, this would largely benefit the middle class. The Manchester university academic Rob Ford has written about this, and why the policy would not be egalitarian.

Opponents of fees typically argue that universities are a means to provide youngsters of all backgrounds with an excellent education. Universities are the providers of higher education which is every citizens right, and which society as a whole benefits from and has a duty to fund.

But just as grammar schools were never engines of meritocracy, so British universities are not and have never been institutions engines of educational equality.

University intakes have risen hugely over time, but there is one constant: inequality in access and uptake. Higher shares of the wealthy, the middle class, those whose parents went to university and so on achieve the grades needed to go, and higher shares of these groups actually go.

The universities themselves have a steep status hierarchy, and the more privileged the institution is, the more privileged its intake of students tends to be. Again, there is plenty of evidence and research to support these points. And again they are logicalwealthier and more middle class families provide all sorts of resources that encourage children into university, while one of the main points of private schools is to buy access to elite universities via lavish spending per pupil.

Universities are therefore not, in reality, egalitarian or democratising institutions on the whole. While they are theoretically open to all (as grammars were), they recruit disproportionately from the advantaged, because the advantaged get the better grades and are more likely to apply. Therefore nowas everthey provide the privileged with a powerful resource to reinforce their advantages, at state expense. Again, the evidence on these points doesnt seem to have much effect on proponents of fee abolition.

(It should also be pointed out that school leavers from more privileged backgrounds have, on average, higher IQs, and that the longer we have social mobility the larger this gap will become but thats another issue.)

In fact there is the argument that universities are regressive because they are a very costly signal, a case made by the American economist Bryan Caplan; its one of many reasons that we should reconsider the expansion of university places.

Its partly because universities are so elitist that they have, paradoxically, become more radically left-wing and more intolerant of heretical views. In the US, for example, the more expensive a college, and the richer the students parents, the more likely they are to block a speaker.

Witness the author Charles Murrays recent ordeal at the hands of students from the unbelievably privileged Middleberry College, spoilt bastards who in any sort of just world would have been shipped off to Aden for two years of unforgiving military service, or maybe sent to work in Roman salt mines.

Political correctness is fashionable, a positional good, and it is understandable that high-status people should therefore compete to become more politically correct than rivals. This is one possible explanation for the US campus safe spaces movement, which is a well-trodden path among commentators, and unfortunately comes with the same problem that Political Correctness did in the late 80s and 90s; the people who endlessly complain about it become almost as tiresome as the people doing it. Moaning about SJWs is the 21st century equivalent to those old Mail headlines about PC Gone Mad.

But its hard to watch things like the Evergreen controversy without concluding that competitive university politics is creating a form of religious madness,like the dancing plagues that struck Europe in the late medieval period. These usually took place during times of great social stress, and also involved disproportionate numbers of unmarried women.

Likewise with the safe space movement, which tends to be female (just as its mirror image, the Alt-Right, is male) and is possibly aggravated by the gender imbalance in higher education, especially the humanities; one other result of which is that, unhappily, there arent enough marriageable men. (Many males are also dropping out of the mating game and devoting themselves to World of Warcraft or following Milo or whatever weird activities young people get up to these days.)

University is leaving large numbers of people saddled with debts, less happy, less open-minded, less likely to find a mate or to have children. Perhaps worst of all it has created an army of angry, middle-class graduates with no real purpose, and who are turning against the very system that sustains them. Jeremy Corbyn is currently 45 per cent in the polls, and won 49 per cent of people with university education in the election, a 17 point lead over the Tories and thats for all ages. Among older people, for whom university-attendance was limited, the political-cultural gap between graduates and non-graduates is small, which suggests that its is not just a function of being highly-educated that moves people to the left, but rather that in the past two or three decades merely attending university is associated with becoming more left-wing.

This might not be a problem, except many leave to find that those elite jobs they assumed were theirs do not exist. According to Theodore Dalrymple at any rate, the expansion of university places in Guatemala actually led to that countrys civil war.I doubt well get that far, but Tom Butler-Bowdonsaccount on Joseph Schumpeter in his recent bookrings true:

Surprisingly, it is the workers who articulate a hatred for capitalism, as Marx hoped, but the middle-class intellectuals who come to consider it morally noxious. This is partly an effect of the universalization of education, which produces far too many educated people for the amount of challenging mental work to be done. Failing to see their potential realized, they turn against the system.

The real worry is that, for all that the word is wildly overused, it comes down to a sense ofprivilege, a feeling that can become extremely dangerous when coupled with disappointment.

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Young people check their privilege and feel deeply disappointed - Spectator.co.uk (blog)

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Jetsons in reality soon? A city in Earth orbit may not be too far away in future – Financial Express

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French Polynesia is expected to get the first floating city in a few years from now. (Reuters)

Many would remember the 1960s cartoon series, Jetsons, (with a later syndication in the late 1980s) featuring the eponymous family in a futuristic utopia called the Orbit City. The Jetsons lived in Skypad Apartments, a building that stood far above the surface of terra firma, supported by what looked like stilts. Such atmospheric dwelling may soon come to be in real life. Over 260,000 people have applied to live in Asgardia, a new city that is to come up some 400 km from the Earths surface. The plan is to send satellites along with space platforms that can interconnect to form a space city. Asgardia says that one of its main goals is to protect the Earth from space threats like solar flares, debris and that the ultimate goal is to build a protective shield around the planet, it is not clear how it will be able to achieve this. The first launch is due this September, with next two launches scheduled for 2018 and 2019. The first inhabitants are expected to settle in eight years. Residents, selected via a random draw, have already created their own charter, parliament and have even selected their first president. Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, who first conceptualised the idea of a space nation, is to be the first nominal head of Asgardia. Although Ashurbeyli is trying hard for UN membership for Asgardia, concerns remain on what laws Asgardians will abide by.

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Creating new nations or cities is not a new phenomenon, and Asgardia may not even be the only space city in the near future. French Polynesia is expected to get the first floating city in a few years from now. Seasteading, an NGO, has been working to establish autonomous, mobile communities on seaborne platforms operating in international waters. But can these new nations decide their own destiny? The idea behind most new cities and autonomous regions is providing a new start for a better society so that they dont repeat the mistakes that other nations have made.

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Jetsons in reality soon? A city in Earth orbit may not be too far away in future - Financial Express

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Youth disillusioned as empowerment fund is looted – NewsDay

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You are here: Home News Youth disillusioned as empowerment fund is looted

A BIRDS eye view over Harare reveals a blanket of minute stalls stacked with second-hand clothes for resale.

BY MICHELLE CHIFAMBA

Desperate, unemployed youths have created informal jobs in the streets as life gradually becomes unbearable for the working population.

The 2012 Population Census recorded that youths aged between 15 and 34 years constitute 84% of the unemployed population.

According to Zimstats, due to high formal unemployment, many of them were now deriving a living from the informal sector.

The Ministry of Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment in 2006 unveiled the Youth Empowerment Fund established as part of the Old Mutual, Stanbic, Industrial Development Bank of Zimbabwe and CBZ Banks contribution to the countrys indigenisation and empowerment programme.

The facility was meant to support youth empowerment and development as a revolving loan facility for income generating projects, according to Old Mutual chief executive officer, Jonas Mushosho.

He noted that the youth fund was flexible and youth friendly in that there was no form of collateral required to access the funds.

CABS head of fund, Brian Mpofu, is on record stating that the fund was aimed at curtailing financial crisis and high rate of unemployment that had crippled the Zimbabwean youth.

Yet almost a decade later, there are a few success stories recorded as the youth fund failed to effectively empower the youth, with an estimated $40 million having disappeared as a result of loosely-knit policies, lack of accountability and corruption.

Corruption is a global problem that affects most developing countries. A United Nations (UN) 2016 study on corruption noted that at least $148 billion is lost to corruption every year in Africa alone.

The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Youth Development Indigenisation Economic Empowerment in May this year conducted a fact-finding mission on the youth fund. The mission also confirmed the abuse of $40 million under the empowerment facility. According to the Committee, at least 95% of the projects visited were either non-existent or had collapsed because they had never been genuine.

Analysts maintain that the funds were too flexible, having no complex terms and conditions attached to the loans. The loans had a non-monitoring and evaluation process making it vulnerable to corruption and misappropriation.

Analysts maintain that the fund, like the land reform programme, was used to win the young peoples support for Zanu PF.

Leakages were created in the vetting process being done by partisan departments. Youth proposals at district level were vetted by youth officers who were former youth militia. At provincial level those who would have made it were vetted by personal assistants who are party of the state machinery, by the time the bank is given the final list a lot of corrupt activities would have preceded the final choice and the bank has no say, independent political analyst Sydney Chisi noted.

The fund is not an empowering tool but a perpetual dependency model where the funds given to the youth are so small all they can do is to spend it. Youth are given a maximum of $5 000 which cannot run any effective project. But some politically linked youth were being given more than $20 000 which was never paid back.

Zimbabwe National Students Association (Zinasu) national spokesperson, Zivai Mhetu, said misappropriation, abuse of funds and loosely knit policies could all be attributed to corruption.

As a result of the abuse of funds by both the beneficiaries and the government officials the empowerment program failed to transform the lives of many youth in Zimbabwe, he said in a statement.

He said through the youth empowerment fund, the government deliberately failed to transform the lives of young people in the country as many youth did not understand business and financial management hence their businesses collapsed in infancy.

The government should be held accountable through the minister of youth. The way in which the funds were disbursed had no clear protocol or procedure which was supposed to be followed in order to avoid the abuse of funds. In this abuse I would blame the minister of youth for his negligence, he said.

Chisi noted that looting of the youth fund was part of Zimbabwes corrupt governance culture and from the look of things will continue for as long as the funding is associated with elections.

The refusal by the former ministers of youth Saviour Kasukuwere and Francis Nhema to arrest all the fund defaulters clearly shows that this fund is partisan and creates a culture of patronage making the system ungovernable.

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India’s top tech architect talks about the tech behind GST, data empowerment – FactorDaily

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Pramod Varma, the chief architect and technology adviser for ID project Aadhaar, is also an adviser to the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), the company that has built the technology to enable the rollout of the new tax. A quintessential technocrat, Varma wears several hats: he is CTO, EkStep, a not-for-profit creating a tech-enabled platform to improve literacy; adviser to the National Payments Corporation of India; and architect, IndiaStack, a set of APIs aimed at leveraging Aadhaar, Indias ambitious citizen ID project, to solve the countrys real world problems. Varma is also on the boards of several technology startups.

FactorDaily caught up with Varma to understand the technology behind the GST regime, the power of data, and Indias data privacy law. Edited excerpts:

Q: We are going from a data poor country to a data-rich country. On the personal side it is Aadhaar and on the business side it is GST Networks which is enabling data richness. What are the ramifications GST specifically has for the future of data and its use in India?

A: One of the unfortunate things that happened in the United States or the developed western society is the concentration of data with one or two companies or the government. No one else benefits out of that. I am hoping the data laws that India is creating is not just about data protection, but also about data empowerment. Law should ensure it empowers individuals or SMEs and ensure right to access ones data. If it is only about protection, we will end up with black boxes of data sources! It is useless. Instead, individuals and SMEs should be able to build their digital assets through accessing their data resulting from digital participation.

Law should ensure it empowers individuals or SMEs and ensure right to access ones data. If it is only about protection, we will end up with black boxes of data sources

Aggregate data is hugely valuable in this age of big data and machine learning. The use of that data will remain locked within the entity keeping the data. Even if they protect it from theft etc, they will still use the data and insights derived from it. Thats what companies like Facebook and Google are doing. Billions of dollars are at stake there for them.

I sometimes fear that we have so much of public discourse on data protection that we will have a protection law and not an empowerment law. If any entity holds any data against yours or my identity, it must be clearly said that it is co-owned. That means, by ones right to access their own data, these entities should give machine readable data back to users which people can use it to get access to various services. So, the footprints that you leave behind will become useful to you.

Also read: Turning the debate on Indias data protection laws

The discourse should not be against digitisation, because we cant go back to the dark ages, you know. Then you shouldnt have internet, you shouldnt have mobile phones. Point is, can India leapfrog in data regime with both protection and empowerment given equal weightage? That is a powerful way of empowering people to participate in digital system, behave well, and earn digital assets!

I sometimes fear that we have so much of public discourse on data protection that we will have a protection law and not an empowerment law

If SMEs and companies cannot take advantage of their own GST data, machine readable and digitally signed for higher trust, for getting better lending rates or invoice discounting and manage their cash flow, we would have created just a tax filing system which is necessary but not sufficient.

GST will be a very powerful system and enable positive incentives if the overarching data empowerment factor comes in. Otherwise GST may become a one-sided tax payment system. I am hopeful India will get it right.

Q: Havent countries like China made use of that system? Because Alibaba the commerce data was available. Credit systems were developed.

A: Not for the people in terms of using their data outside Alibaba ecosystem. Where is Alibaba or Amazon giving back the data? Even most of our banks do not give us digitally signed machine readable data, instead they give PDF or unsigned Excel sheet that no other entity trusts. By the way, some have started doing it which is great. EU is getting their PSD2 (revised payment service directive) implementation soon which will force banks to provide data. So, companies like Alibaba or Amazon or Facebook or Google are surely using the data to provide further services within their closed system and keep the users locked in.

Q: As an adviser to the GSTN, what are some of the technology issues that you had to address?

A:The concept of the tax system as an Open API-based platform is the biggest thing that we were able to bring to this system. From the tax department perspective, a portal is sufficient. Go to the portal and file taxes, no? Upload your excel or pdf and youre done. The tax system is a just a vertical closed solution, right? And we were saying no. The platform you are building has to be open for further innovation and empowerment of taxpayers. While aportal is needed, it needs to be built on its own APIs.

Now, the GSTN has a tax payer authentication API, as a derivative of the tax filing system! You can do a KYC on a company with nothing to do with tax! Lets say you want to give a loan to a company, or you want to sign up as a petrol bunk merchant or something. Today, how do you do KYC? Its enormously costly, pretty much paper based and low trust. How do you know the people representing the company is indeed authenticated? Today, everyone takes all the paperwork and redoes all these checks, which is avoidable repeated cost. With the GSTN API, you can do this because you already have a GSTN ID and people who are signatories of the company have their IDs are attached so you can actually authenticate a company.

The GSTN system is expected to handle 3-4 billion invoices every month each having 100 to 200 line items. Unlike Aadhaar, GST is going to be a big bang rollout and not a gradual one

The second big influence we could bring in is build vs buy. Generally in any large system like this there is this question. Should we just buy a system and customise? Here at the GSTN, we said we will build because anyway you wont get what you want (if you buy). And you have some heavily customised product that you have no control over because you dont have the source code or the intellectual property. How can you build a national, critical infrastructure where control of the IP and source code is not with you? So we said, it has to be built and it has to be built using open source.

The third one was about using open source to build. So it was also very much debated. When we put out the RFP saying open source be used, there were enough complaints! Thankfully we had a good strong committee. In addition, MeitY policy already articulates this clearly.

Q: How are APIs going to help?

A: Its a fundamental belief. People like us who build digital infrastructure believe that a solution in a box is never possible in a large diverse country like ours. We cannot have one guy saying that I know the solution, heres my app, and it solves all the worlds healthcare problems or education problems. We must always take an infrastructure building view especially when building public goods. Open APIs are fundamental for creating well encapsulated building blocks that others can use to further build specific solutions.

The GSTN has done the right thing in building APIs first and then building portal which works off the same APIs. Ecosystem partners who are building products for SMEs etc can also get access to these APIs and allow end users to use their app

In the case of GST, how can we expect one portal will serve the needs of very large companies as well as small SMEs? That too with different language skills, different technology needs, etc. The GSTN has done the right thing in building APIs first and then building portal which works off the same APIs. Ecosystem partners who are building products for SMEs etc can also get access to these APIs and allow end users to use their app. For example, if one small SME is using MS Word to create invoices, it should be as easy for them to upload those invoices right from MS Office to the GSTN. Tax filing should be integral part of doing business and not as a painful, costly extra process.

It is also based on the belief that you can never build an app that fits all. For a small SME sitting in a small town in Tamil Nadu may need a much simpler app on her mobile in Tamil. How can you say the same portal should also work for a large company having millions of invoices? It is unfair to expect government to build many apps. While there is a common portal to get started, we must let entrepreneurs build specific solutions to meet the needs of people.

Q: If you look at India right now, theres this whole digital revolution thats happening. How do see this playing out and data tying into this?

A: Again, I just want to say keep it simple. Its not confusing. Do we have a choice not to digitise? In my opinion, whether we like it or not, internet and mobile phones and digital platforms are here to stay. When this happens, there is an explosion at which digital footprints are created, every interaction is creating a digital footprint. Unfortunately if we do not design the systems and laws correctly, this data will stay very concentrated with few entities. That should never happen. I think India has the golden opportunity to fix that upfront.

Q: The technology sophistication of Aadhaar and GST is enterprise class. What are the main features?

A: Within the Aadhaar system, 600 million plus authentications are done every month now. A billion plus people are already in the database. The GSTN system is expected to handle three-four billion invoices every month each having 100 to 200 line items. Unlike Aadhaar, GST is going to be a big bang rollout and not a gradual one.

For such scale and national critical systems, reliability of the system is very important. Its about having a failure resilience within all components of the system. Most important, its about the re-factorability of the system. That means, knowing that you will not get everything right in the beginning, how do you constantly re-factor so that years later you still have an evolving system. You dont want an ageing system. You want a system that can easily adapt and evolve.

Most important, its about the re-factorability of the system. That means, knowing that you will not get everything right in the beginning, how do you constantly re-factor so that years later you still have an evolving system

When you say enterprise class, for me, its about reliability, well designed security, resilience to failure knowing failure happens, and most importantly re-factorability. Then there are the obvious must have features such as scalability, traceability etc.

Q: In your opinion, what are the constituents of digital india? Not the government program called Digital India, but what are the constituents of India as a digital nation? What are the blocks?

A: I think, there are primarily three parts to it. One is the physical infrastructure, the connectivity. All that falls into that bucket. National fibre network, telcos expanding 4G network, TRAIs initiative on public WiFi, etc. are all part of that.

The second one is a software stack that will allow a billion people and millions of companies to digitally interact seamlessly with low cost and high trust. So the real question about India Stack was not about anything else. It was about creating shared infrastructure on which inclusive services can easily be built in a cost effective fashion. These days, with India Stack, a bank or MFI can now effectively offer their services to much wider use base without high cost. Otherwise, everybody has to build their own vertical stack, right? Does anyone write a web server anymore? I wrote a web server in 1995. Its stupid to write a web server these days. Why? Because of commoditisation of infrastructure layers.

Also read: To pay or not to pay GST, mull bloggers, app developers. Theres no escaping it, say experts

What is commoditisation really? Creating shared infrastructure. So that you and I dont have to write a database or web server anymore. We have to do it at scale. So,the digital software stack is a shared infrastructure that allows very easy assemblage or solutioning. People who build solutions can assemble something much faster and cheaper today than 10 years ago.

The third part of Digital India is digital literacy. Thats huge and necessary for a country like India. Its about literacy, awareness, behaviour, thinking whats right and whats wrong. Physical society evolved over centuries. But, we dont have centuries unfortunately, with the digital world. Its happening in a decade. I am afraid there is no simple answer but to constantly evolve!

Disclosure: FactorDaily is owned by SourceCode Media, which counts Accel Partners, Blume Ventures and Vijay Shekhar Sharma among its investors. Accel Partners is an early investor in Flipkart. Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the founder of Paytm. None of FactorDailys investors have any influence on its reporting about Indias technology and startup ecosystem.

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What is freedom, anyway? And how are we living it? – Aleteia EN

Posted: at 4:05 am

Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought. St.John Paul II, October 8, 1995 Homily, Apostolic Journey to the United States of America

July 4, 2017 is now past, but its never too late to ponder a fundamental question related to our nations founding: What is freedom?

Thats the exact question with which I began each semester of classes during the seven years I served as an adjunct professor of theology at a local Catholic college, teaching Healthcare Ethics and Sexual Ethics.

Every year, students answers inevitably boiled down less and less surprisingly to one clear mantra: freedom is the ability to do whatever we want, without restriction. I would then spend several weeks explaining the Christian concept of freedom, and why it has more to do with having the grace and strength to exercise self-restraint than the ability to act upon limitless choices.

I am reminded of that experience every July 4th, when I hear these words from America The Beautiful:

America! America!God mend thine every flawConfirm thy soul in self-controlThy liberty in law!

Our freedom is made possible in large part through the practice of self-restraint, and as Pope John Paul II said on his apostolic visit to America in 1995, through a shared commitment to certain moral truths about the human person and human community.

He went on to ask:

The basic question before a democratic society is: how ought we to live together? In seeking an answer to this question, can society exclude moral truth and moral reasoning? Can the Biblical wisdom which played such a formative part in the very founding of your country be excluded from that debate?

St. Paul gives us some key points of such Biblical wisdom in his letter to the Galatians, wherein he writes about freedom:

For freedom Christ has set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slaveryFor you were called for freedom, brothers. But do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh; rather, serve one another through love.For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement, namely, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you go on biting and devouring one another, beware that you are not consumed by one another. Galatians 5:1, 13-15

As we Americans celebrate freedom, and concurrently observe the world around us engaged in macro and micro level wars (including those among our brethren on social media), we would do well to ask ourselves how free we really are, and whether we are personally promoting war or peace, slavery or liberty. More specifically, are we engaging in behaviors that prevent us from inheriting the kingdom of God, including hatreds, rivalryoutbursts of furydissension, factions and the like? Or in contrast, are we allowing the Holy Spirit to grow us up in true freedom; freedom that is manifested in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control? (Galatians 5:19-23)

To paraphrase John Paul II, are we living together as we ought?

Of course, Im preaching the Gospel to myself, and it is a message I am earnestly asking God for the grace to take to heart and live. Will you join me? Let us pray together the Peace Prayer of St. Francis, which first appeared in France in 1912 on the eve of World War I.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.

O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.

Amen.

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What is freedom, anyway? And how are we living it? - Aleteia EN

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Freedom to light up the neighborhood – Omaha World-Herald

Posted: at 4:05 am

Have your eardrums recovered yet?

In the aftermath of another Fourth of July, its a fair question to ask. Nowadays the blasts, brocades and breaks of July Fourth are so extreme that I wear the sound-deadening earmuffs I would use while sighting in a hunting rifle. Sure, they dont look very cool but they look much cooler than a hearing aid.

Now, dont get me wrong. I enjoy a good fireworks display and we detonate our fair share in the driveway. But over the last few years weve had some close calls.

Like the artillery shell that exploded a few feet in the air, landed in my friends lap, and started him on fire. We promptly put him out, but still.

Nor will I forget the firework cake that tipped over and started shooting multiple flaming balls into a lawn full of kids and a garage full of more fireworks. That was fun.

July Fourth is a day to celebrate and remember our freedom but these accidents have changed our family display. This year, we were more selective in what we bought. Were free to blow up whatever legal fireworks we can find. That doesnt mean we have to.

When my freedom is putting my children and party guests in danger of being, you know, set on fire, then maybe its time to dial things back a bit.

To me, its a colorful reminder of how freedom isnt the same thing as license.

Christianity is sometimes seen as freedom to do whatever we want, because after all, God is forgiving and kind. He certainly is that and more but does that really mean I can do whatever I want?

The Rolling Stones lit the fuse on this concept back in 1965 with the resounding report, Im free to do what I want, any old time.

That song has been covered and sampled through the years because of the ideology that keeps it smoking: freedom means being able to do what we want for ourselves.

Just this year, the recording artist Pitbull threw some Stones into the lyrics of his song, Freedom.

Feel free, do whatever you want whenever you want with whoever you want. Feel free, who cares what they say? Just live your life cause we dont live twice.

With my lips, I might say I disagree with those lyrics. With my life, I seem to affirm them. Often, Ill use my freedom as an excuse to serve myself. Were all guilty of that from time to time. Those kinds of choices usually wind up blowing up in our faces and burning other people. Its what we do.

But is it what we were made to do?

Jesus displayed a different kind of freedom. He was free to do whatever he wanted during his earthly life: Free to turn stones into bread; Free to put on a sparkling show; Free to have all the wealth, fame and recognition imaginable.

But he didnt abuse his freedom. He used it to serve others instead of himself. He served the duds, the discontinued and the damaged. Thats what love does.

Greater love has no man than this, that He lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)

What if we celebrated the freedom that men and women have laid down their lives to secure for us by serving others? That kind of love can light up a neighborhood in an entirely different way.

And, no one will wind up on fire, either. Which is nice.

Gregg Madsen is the lead pastor of Steadfast Gretna.

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A recommendation: Support the Colorado Freedom Memorial – 9NEWS.com

Posted: at 4:05 am

If you've never been, it's a beautiful little spot tucked in by Buckley Airforce Base. The series of glass panels has the names of every Coloradan who gave their lives for this country.

Allison Sylte, KUSA 6:54 PM. MDT July 07, 2017

The Colorado Freedom Memorial, which honors fallen soldiers from the Centennial State, was damaged on Fourth of July weekend. Police are investigating. (Photo: Byron Reed)

KUSA - May we make a recommendation? This is where Next points you to something that isn't ours, but is worth your time.

In this case, its an event thats trying to do something good after a shameful act.

You might remember how over Independence Day weekend, the Colorado Freedom Memorial which is dedicated to Colorados fallen soldiers was apparently vandalized, its glass shattered.

The damage is estimated at between $40,000 to $55,000.

But this is Colorado, and one amazing thing about our community is how we band together for people in need.

You can help restore this important memorial from 8 a.m. to noon on Saturday at a fundraiser and open house.

Starting at 8 a.m., you can get a breakfast burrito and bottles of water in exchange for a donation. Later, Jim N Nicks will sell barbecue sandwiches, with all the proceeds going toward the Colorado Freedom Memorial.

There will also be tours of the memorial, chances to ask questions as well as a look at some of the heroes the memorial honors.

If thats not incentive enough, were also told the Denver Broncos cheerleaders will make an appearance.

What happened at the Colorado Freedom Memorial was a shameful act, but once again, this is Colorado and one thing you can count on is for our community band together.

You can find more details about the event here:http://bit.ly/2tqXkBt

2017 KUSA-TV

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A recommendation: Support the Colorado Freedom Memorial - 9NEWS.com

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