Mr Christopher Dimech, from the Department of Geosciences, in collaboration with the Department of Mathematics, will present his third talk in the series Christopher Dimech Talks, taking place at Room 405, Mathematics and Physics Building, University of Malta Msida Campus on 27 March from 13:00 to 14:00.
The Geomathematics Seminar is inspired by the launch of the GNU Behistun Package as part of the GNU Operating System. Founded by Richard Stallman, an Operating System Designer who had worked at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the United States, the GNU Project aims to put users of users in control of their own computing. Nonfree software, on the other hand puts its users under the power of the software's developer or of the copyright holder.
Since 2013, the Debian GNU Linux Operating System, a variant of the GNU System has been running the computational needs of the International Space Station, following the infection of the self-replicating malicious computer program W32.Gammima.AG in 2008. Replacing Microsoft's Windows XP, the adoption of principles taken from the GNU Project, demonstrates the respected position of Free Software in the world of science and technology.
Free software puts its users in control of their own computing. Nonfree software puts its users under the power of the software's developer or of the copyright holder. Education institutions at all levels should only use and teach the principles of Free Software because it is the only way that fosters a community of goodwill, cooperation, and collaboration, not only for those actively working with software, but also for attracting new people.
Following advocacy work to institute at the University of Malta a framework for Free Software adoption, in contrast to control models inspired by intellectual monopolies formally driven by the Knowledge Transfer Office, Christopher Dimech will discuss the injustice of misinterpreting copyright and patent law to benefit right holders such as publishers, corporations and institutions. Rather than admitting the school of thought where everything must be solved through very limited forms of exceptions and limitations, Dimech will argue corrective measures based on a broad free licensing framework for educational institutions that addresses the requirements for digital rights in the 21 century, without which a people-empowered free society is not possible.
The talk is particularly useful following the surveillance and control society we live in, that has made automatic screening mandatory for published works, driven by corporations and governments. At the local level, publishers such as BDL and Merlin, and politicians such as Therese Comodini Cachia, Francis Zammit Dimech, Roberta Metsola, David Casa, Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, David Stellini and Alfred Sant, all agree against the security and privacy aspects of technology towards citizens, and actively campaign to subvert the idea of digital rights for all humanity.
The Chief Administrator of GNU Behistun will then go on to discuss the use of mathematical intuition to investigate geodynamical processes. He will delve in some detail on two GNU Behistun proposed projects for Summer of Code, open to university students, age 18 and older in most countries. The speaker will then discuss the formulation of Geophysical Inverse Problems and the task of reconstructing initial geological configurations from their geological responses, the latter being very much what geology is all about.