A moment of silence please

A great American hero has left us.

R.I.P. Evil Knievel

“It was the best of times, the worst of times…”

Minorities in FL/OSS

I’ll be refering to racial minorities in this post. We are all well aware of the critical need for women in free software.

In the past few days, as I surf the ‘internet wave’ for various research opportunities, scholarships, etc. I notice the push for minorities in education. I’ll overlook the arguments for affirmative action for this post, because it would be a red herring.

In particular I see a push toward the sciences, such as physics, math, engineering, and computer science. This CS push is mildly entertaining to me, because of the work I see from all the various LUGs/LoCo’s around the world who contribute so much to free software. In particular, translations and bug fixing is done on an international level, from what I’ve seen in the Ubuntu project.

This is a good thing. While translations and desktop work is more computer application then it is computer science, it is still a move towards universal acceptance of computing and in particular, Linux.

In America, we have all sorts of political rhetoric and arguments about race and the proper uses, role, importance, etc. which race plays into the broader society.  But in the Free software world, if you want to help and you care about your work, then you are accepted. There is nothing more important.

Case in point: The LoCo leader of Chicago Ubuntu spent years causing trouble in the Little Village area, the same area where I grew up. When we are hanging out and joking around, he tells me that he is “more mexican” then I am. Does this phrase actually mean anything? No, not really, because we both have the same expriences growing up. Race is irrelevent, becuase out binding relationship is the work we do, and want to do, for free software.

Nothing else matters. Not social class, not degrees or gender. Anyone who believes otherwise is just deceiving themselves.

The downsides of Open Source Software

Recently I was asked to drop some songs into a Philips Gogear m3 player for my cousin. I’m going to imply that all the music was acquired legally, for various reasons. For this blog post, you will see why I make the implication.

After assesing the physical state of the player, I figure it would be a simple drag and drop via USB. Mounting the drive proved troublesome and I got this output from dmesg | tail

[17180988.752000] sde: assuming drive cache: write through
[17180988.772000] SCSI device sde: 3951360 512-byte hdwr sectors (2023 MB)
[17180988.776000] sde: Write Protect is off
[17180988.776000] sde: Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00
[17180988.776000] sde: assuming drive cache: write through
[17180988.776000] sde: sde1
[17180988.780000] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sde
[17180988.780000] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0
[17181002.176000] FAT: Unrecognized mount option “flush” or missing value
[17183741.120000] FAT: Unrecognized mount option “flush” or missing value

Some research showed that there was a program called OpenGoGear, to help with these sorts of issues. I tried to install the .deb file and there was an issue extracting the file. My next attempt to install from source gave me a dependency issue. An attempt to fix the dependency showed I needed ANOTHER, uninstalled library. At this point I gave up because dependency hell is not for me.

And then I plugged in the brand spanking new ipod-mini-touch-screen-video-toaster-in-a-pocket. My computer was unable to figure out what to do with this player. FAIL. If hardware companies want my money (and for that player, it requires lots of it), then I need a reasonable guarantee that it will be compliant with my software. Attention Apple: It’s an mp3 player. It lets you play music. Not the arm codes for a nuclear device. There is no harm in taking 3 days out of a 6 month development cycle to guarantee that your players are Linux friendly. Get over yourselves.

And then I see this gOS system being sold at Wal-Marts all over the United States. It’s an Ubuntu derivative, but that doesn’t make it Ubuntu. From my understanding, it has many non-free components out of the box. Also, it was my understanding that Canonical was in talks with Wal-Mart to get Ubuntu installed on the computers, but it appears that one didn’t go through. So, we have a tiny, tiny company profiting from a (in all likelihood, deliberate), deployment of Linux to a large retailer where the demand far outweighs supply. We can expect this company to grow by leaps and bounds however.

And in the news, I read about the MPAA using Xubuntu to run toolkits on university networks and sniff out p2p traffic. Tax dollars should not be spent to support the MPAA’s business model, versus that of technology’s pursuit of enabling content to the people. Legal or otherwise. Of course, when 60 million Americans are using p2p, then the issue becomes not ‘is there downloading?’ but ‘how do we fix this?’ I am proud of my stance against the MPAA because it seems obvious to me that there is no possible way their organization can fix what they perceive to be a problem.

The problem extends beyond p2p and downloading. It extends to the very spirit of software libre. Simply using GNU/Linux is not enough to change the world’s mind about computing. Look at the struggle of the community between mp3 support and freedom. It is obvious that those who believe in the fundamental awesomness of computing are not the ones who necessarily dictate the direction computing will take. Because the MPAA uses toolkits to protect proprietary content and formats, they are violating the spirit of free and open source software, regardless of which distribution they developed their software on. “Show us the code” is not enough, because the implications and implementation of the code are what matter. The code may be the most basic part of the computer, but the latter is what will vibrate through society, which is what makes the MPAA’s actions so unsavory, and why I am proud to oppose their actions. I don’t care what organization you belong to, when you take my hard work and effort to support an open and free society, and use it for a restrictive action, I will stand against you.

My final point is this: If you develop open source/free software/copy left content, there is no guarantee that the uses will be ones you agree we. Law and opinion are thankfully two different fields, with some overlap, but in this case, I would like to see more freedom and less protectionism.

-Eddie

New stuff

I recently added the following to my computer collection:

pemphigus@pemphigus-desktop:~$

Social Security, Public Keys, etc.

I was talking to my CS professor after class and he made an offhand comment along the lines of, “Social Security numbers are supposed to be personal, but they’re not.”

True, identify theft and all sorts of online spoofing are a big deal. But if we look at a broader picture, it is very likely that the very notion of Social Security is going to disappear in the next 50 years so. This will also change depending on which poliitican you vote for, but what will we do afterwards? Will this need for SSN be so rampant among the federal agencies? I can of course imagine the federal government perpetuating a broken, inefficient system long after it’s usefulness has expiredy. Actually, ‘imagine’ is the wrong word, because they do it all the time.

But what about this idea of ‘person’? Will it really disappear in the digital age? Will our personal identities all be disappearing behind a PGP(GPG)/RSA/NSA encryption standard? I see in the blogosphere the desire of people to share MORE of themselves to the world, and we can see it in the explosion of digital technologies on the heels of music downloading. As the Internet culture grows past it’s early 90’s revolution to the Web 2.0 evolution and beyond, what can we honestly predict for the notion of privacy and person. On the one hand, we expect our identifiable materials such as SSN, drivers license, etc. to disappear behind a cloud of randomization and prime numbers, and on the other, we expect our online handles to increase in Googlebilaty.

The obvious answer is public key cryptography, and the spread of such technologies to the people, but I find collectivist actions counter intuitive when it comes to encryption. Consider the following sceneria:

Teacher: Okay boys and girls. Lunch time is over. Today we are going to create a PGP key for everyone. Here are some code works you might want to use: ‘foo’ ‘hello’ ‘world!’ ‘random’ ‘password’

This overdramitzation is meant to serve one point. This teacher is a federal, or state employee. Eventually, this moment will be traced back, or refrenced by the government. It may the county board, or the Executive branch, but it will be government nonetheless.

And does anyone see where this is going?

hint: it’s not going anywhere

It’s the same system we have in place. I don’t see any difference between the system we have now, and the system above which is liable to replace it. By the time a citizen is old enough to understand the intricacies of Public Key Cryptography, at say 18, there is more than enough opportunities for the government to exploit encryption standards (and encryption legislation, oh my!) to make it suit it’s needs, and not the needs of citizens in particular.

-Eddie

White Papers…

The Ubuntu Chicago Loco is working on migrating a server for a small College in Mt. Prospect, IL. In return, this NON technical school (no IT or CS majors) gets a stable server, support from an excellent base of technical users, freedom, and the LoCo receives meeting space as well as new users for our ‘crack’.

The head of the project, Patrick Green, would like to make this a case study and/or white paper, which allows the team more flexibility.* This will allow us to point to our past work, the benefits of FLOSS, etc. In particular, white papers are drawn up to promote and advance policy ideas, which is critical for missions such as the LoCos. I’m frankly surprised that no one has I know has done one yet.

In particular, I am wondering if anyone in the blogsphere has any tips, ideas, help they can offer.  I’ve read the wiki page and all the first the hits of Google search, because this is what RTFM means in the present day, however I was hoping someone could help me get more in depth with it.

-Eddie  M.

*Patrick Green said he would defer the project to me, since he is a newer member of the team, with less involvement etc. However, it is his school, his idea, his students, his idea for the white paper. I am basically the documentation and email expert. It is his project in all senses of the word, I am just involved with it.

The ‘King’ of Spain

Is anyone else discouraged and disgusted by the King of Spain telling Hugo Chavez to ‘shut up’, and being applauded by his country?

“The king has put Chavez in his place in the name of all Spaniards.”

-Eddie

The Inevitable

So I work as a webmaster. Good stuff. I sent out emails, upload photos/content to the website, manage the files etc. Nothing flashy or fancy or mind blowing, just the basic stuff that HAS to be done for the work to continue.

Today it happened. Every admin and geek knows about it. I was waiting on it (even though I have been kicking myself for not being more active about it), and now it’s done.

Windows virus. Spyware. Adware. Trojans. Rootkits.

All over one computer in particular. I don’t know how it happened, or why, but it did. I spent a few hours this afternoon attacking the bugs and sorting the issues out. A defrag. and password reset is also in order. My solution at home looks a little like this:

Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 7.10
Release: 7.10
Codename: gutsy

(lsb_release -a)

Why do people both with such nonsense and silly software? If I could, I would change it all in an instant, but I cant. This makes my life a million times harder.

-Eddie

Illibuntu CodeSprint

Myself, along with Manchicken (Mike Stemle, Jr.) are launching a codesprint/hackathon for Feb. 9th, 2008, as part of our continuing work with Ubuntu-Illinois. The details of the meeting can be found on theEvents page for our team.

More exciting, we received from press from this week’s release of Ubuntu Weekly News. Exciting!

As always, if you are willing to contribute in any way, please let me know and I’ll get back to you.

-Eddie

Ned Snow quote:

Thoughts from his abstract:

Copytraps threaten speech on the Internet. A copytrap arises when a website falsely represents that Internet users may legally download copyrighted expression. Under copyright law, that false representation is irrelevant: Internet users are strictly liable for downloading without permission. Strict liability governs copying on the web. The website sets the trap; the law snares the innocent; the copyright holder wins the game. Unfairness could not be more apparent, so Internet users are now refusing to play. Internet users are becoming reluctant to download anything at all in light of harsh penalties for innocently downloading copyrighted expression. Even where circumstances strongly suggest that an expression may be legally downloaded, the penalty for mistaking that legality is so extreme that users simply refrain from downloading. In short, copyright’s strict liability chills legal downloading. This chilling violates the First Amendment, for downloading is copying, copying is expressing, and expressing is speaking. Downloading is speech. Speech by downloading receives First Amendment protection where a downloader has permission from an author to copy expression, or in other words, where the downloading is legal under copyright law. Laws that inhibit legal downloading encroach on protected speech. Because copyright’s strict liability chills legal downloading, copyright’s strict liability chills speech that receives First Amendment protection. That is, strict liability punishment of illegal downloading chills legal downloading, and legal downloading constitutes protected speech. Chilling protected speech—legal downloading—violates fundamental principles of First Amendment law. Copytraps are unconstitutional.

Copytraps are unconstitutional. I would argue that the perpetual copyrights which fuel copytraps are themselves unconstitutional, but the argument has been beat to the ground.

-Eddie

EDIT: Thanks to the reader who pointed out my typos. I was thinking of NED Snow, not Tony Snow.