It's 10:40 pm and I'm sipping an RC Cola trying to get a hit of caffeine. My back is tired from carrying a basket of dirty laundry to the end of the block and I'm wiping sweat from my brow. It's obvious from my physique that I hate work.

In fact, I'm already a day behind. Laundry is a Sunday evening chore for me but somehow I managed to beg and plead into postponing it a day yesterday just so I'd not have to do it. The problem with procrastination is that it eventually catches up to you.

Why am I blogging about chores? Isn't it obvious, I hate work! Or... do I?

The past few months I've been growing more and more cynical. I don't know if it's my sense of empathy that simply won't "let things go" or if it's more, as my wife suspects, that I am not really sure what would make me happy. In her eyes, there's a void in me, an emptiness that I'm aware of but not sure how to fill. To her, I'm making busy work all day, every day, to fill this void.

She might be right.

I'm still critical of the government. It's hard to recognize this massive group of violent people and then just shrug it off. It's hard to see the ripple effects caused by those people's suppression of other people; the wealth destroyed, the potential unmet.

I've spent every waking moment the past few months thinking about those things. About moving to New Hampshire as part of the Free State Project and working to cast off the "chains of government". I chat on the Libervis Network about it, talk to my receptive co-workers about it, write letters to the Social Security people telling them "I'm done" and it makes me feel strong and powerful and alive and in control.

In all of that, though, I think I may have lost sight of something. Something very important. My goal.

I tell myself I don't like work, and maybe I really don't, but somehow I've managed to make that "work" an all consuming desire and forgotten that the work isn't the objective, but simply a goal to having a better life. Sometimes music is just beats and tunes but sometimes it manages to hit the nail on the head so perfectly that it can describe a feeling perfectly.

"So can you tell me what exactly does freedom mean,
If I'm not free to be as twisted as I wanna be
Don't wanna be another player losing in this game
I'm trying to impress upon you
We're not the same"

I'm going to be taking a little bit of time over the next period of X (X being "the amount of time I need") to focus on the positivity that is already in my life, and refocus on just why it is that I need to work and correct the things I see wrong in the world. Hopefully, I can remind others to do the same as well. Don't focus so hard on the process that you lose sight of the objective. Voluntaryism is all about the recognition that the super-majority of interaction already happens voluntarily and that interaction is good. Why then, when it's mostly good, do we obsess with the small minority that is not?

"Be the change you want to see". I want to be someone who is free. To do that, I must act. To be free, I need to move past the "not there yet" and focus on the "mostly there". Not doing that will make me crazy and crazy activist just aren't effective.

In the spirit of the ASU Photo Tour, I've decided to do a little collection of images for the FSO image which is built on the FreeSmartphone.Org framework.

Let me first get some weight off my chest. I've been feeling burnt out by Openmoko since the end of June when some confusion was cleared up about the ASU, the FSO and in general, the direction of the software for Openmoko devices.

I'm going to toss around some acronyms and a new title to think about. The ASU was a proof-of-concept image that combined Qtopia, Enlightenment and GTK running on top of Xorg. This first image was built (I'm told) by rasterman by hand and that issues would be worked on until August, when a first "functional" image would be released. ASU, then, means April/August Software Update. Either month works just fine - the first image was released in April, the result slated for release in August.

To address the confusion, that software line is now Openmoko 2008.08 so "ASU" and 2008.08 are the same thing for the most part. With me? Good, let's move on.

When the ASU was announced, two other things happened. The GTK based 2007.02 line was obsoleted (or some might argue deprecated since it's now getting attention from the community) and the FSO Framework was announced. I'll focus on the framework, because it's where my complaints and burnout centered around.

The ASU and Framework were announced at roughly the same time. To the community it appeared as if Sean Moss-Pultz had pulled a decision out of his ass to abandon the software that people knew and go with Qtopia instead. This decision appeared to be arbitrary and sudden, leaving a lot of questions unanswered. Frankly, it left a lot of questions unasked, because this move was so radical and sudden. The biggest unanswered question was I want to develop an app for Freerunner, what should I start with? This is when the Framework was revealed by Mickey Lauer.

Perhaps this was too big of a leap, but from then on it appeared as if the ASU and the Framework were complimentary projects within Openmoko. The end result of both projects would be to develop dbus based services and signaling and adapt the Qtopia applications to use this system. As I reasoned, ASU focused on the userspace apps and the Framework would focus on the back-end and the merger of those two would be the "mass market" software Openmoko would ship on average-Joe ready devices. The future looked promising, and I was among one of the most vocal people in regard to this.

On 28 June 2008, Mickey Lauer posted again, making it pretty clear my assumptions were wrong. The Framework would not be merged into the ASU line to be shipped to customers. If the two were to merge, it would be by community support.

Frankly, after the disappointing abandonment of the Neo 1973 device, the sudden shift from one development line to another, the horrible communication about the aim and directive of the "official" and general all around cluster-fuckery that is Openmoko I began to loose faith in the project. I know I'm not alone in that regard, because within 24 hours of feeling I'd been hoodwinked, the SHR project was announced. While it may not have been the "fork heard 'round the world" it was a significant point, because I think there the camel's back snapped.

Allow me to take a moment to give my impression about the other side too. I mentioned above that the general opinion was that Sean Moss-Pultz issued a directive to begin adopting Qtopia and that it was contrary to the aims of Openmoko. Now, I don't know since I'm not in regular communication with him (the times we've exchanged e-mails have been polite and to the point) but I suspect the issue is deeper than that. From reading Sean's blog posts and mailing list messages, I think the man is committed to open platforms and more than that, the power that leveraging those platforms gives to users. I think he truly cares about Openmoko's goals. On the flip side, he's also the CEO of a company and in that respect, his job is to ensure that Openmoko turns a profit. Furthermore, while he wears the title "Chief Executive Officer" there's nothing chief about his position if it's anything like other companies. The financiers, investors, venture capitalists and shareholders (if it's public) are the real chiefs. Speaking bluntly, I suspect that those people started getting freaked out by the Freerunner "delay". The media had long moved on and the term "vaporware" began floating around in regard to Openmoko and I'm sure this made the investor squeamish.

Sean had a choice then. In order to see his goal happen, he needs to compromise. To continue building and selling open platforms to people, Openmoko would need to make their first platform profitable to please the investors. That platform might not see the light of day unless they could be convinced that Openmoko could begin turning profit quickly. With the GTK based software showing problems, some architecturally, the decision was to either rebuild a boat mid-voyage or hop on that shiny ocean liner next to you.

I don't fault Sean for making that call. I fault the investors who decided to dump money into a project and then didn't allow the vision to be pushed forward. If they wanted to back an open platform, they should let the people making open platforms do what they need to meet that goal. If they wanted to back a company shipping phones that were nothing special, they should have done that.

It wasn't the one decision alone that hurt the project though. Openmoko is open. The first time this hurt Openmoko was with Freerunner. When Freerunner was conceptualized and discussed, the media (even open source centric media) stuck to their traditions and speculated that "Freerunner will be an iPhone killer". The problem with talking about your products is that nobody is used to companies talking about their products before they're in warehouses, awaiting some magical signal to roll out to customers. So while it was pretty clear to someone who thinks critically, a lot of people saw the Freerunner as being "delayed". There was also the "developer" and "mass market" confusion - even as the Freerunner was shipping, people didn't understand that there were two markets, and two release dates, for the device. Of course, I get the impression that even this might actually have changed, instead to focus a smaller run on "niche markets" like universities and specialty vendors and aim the next product more broadly, but this isn't confirmed for me. But I digress.

Openmoko is trying to walk the balance between being open and being effective. How do you talk about plans about future dazzling products and (a year or 18 months later) ship a product that STILL dazzles people? How do you market a product as meeting people's needs when the product is designed to not assume to know the user's needs and be flexible enough to still fill them? Openmoko hasn't mastered it and it's caused some backlash, but nobody else is doing the same thing better. In some ways, it's a gigantic experiment.

As I sat down to write all that, I planned on it being a small post and then jumping right into the pictures of the FSO, but it turned out filling up two (going on three) pages in OpenOffice Writer, but it feels good to have put the feelings into words. With that, let's move onward, and look at what the FSO Framework has to offer.

Meet Zhone.

Zhone is a very basic program designed to demonstrate the capabilities of the Framework backend systems. As an added bonus it looks spiffy. I don't have a working SIM inserted in this image, so you can't see the network I'm connected to or signal strength but these features normally exist and can be seen in later images.

For a moment, we'll ignore the irony of the icon selection. I'm a married man with a professional career and other than ones in use for the purpose of having a rotary phone in use, I've not seen one in the wild. Yet in my hands to take this screenshot was a device that has substantially more computing power than a Game Boy Advance, which itself has substantially more computing power than all of NASA Mission Control when they placed a human being on the moon. Let's ignore this and click the phone icon, shall we?

At the top you can see two bars, one blue and one green. The blue bar represents cellular signal strength and above it displays the carrier message. This SIM works, but is not active, so can only be used for emergency calls so displays "SOS Only".

To the right is a green bar, displaying battery strength. In all honesty, I'm not sure what the letters above that bar indicate, but I'm sure that I'll get that information soon after this post is public. If you're terribly interested, check back later or leave a comment with an e-mail address (doesn't require registration, that bugs the hell out of me!) and I'll send you a message once I know for sure.

Got it already. :) They stand for Bluetooth, GSM, WLAN and GPS, respectively. Small letters indicate "turned off", capital letters are for "turned on". Thanks for pointing this out wurp!

Below that is the dialer display and keypad. The back arrow deletes and the big green check enters the number. The smaller arrows, as well as the bottom row of icons do nothing, except for the "X" which exits the dialer.

The next section well look at include the messaging features.

The forward, delete and reply buttons simply drop me back at the main screen. I'm assuming this is because I have no SMS messages but it could be unimplemented features. I have a strong hunch that they work. In the Milestone 1 release, unimplemented features were clearly marked as such.

Clicking on the "Send" button brings up a selection screen where you pick your contact, touch the bar for that contact and are presented with a message compose screen.

I had to censor the first image because it contained phone numbers. The nifty thing about this is that it actually imported them from the SIM card automagically.

Contacts management is the next feature of Zhone to explore. Like the SMS section, you're presented with a menu to select your action, including "Edit Name", "Edit Number" and "new". I elected to do each of those for illustrative purposes and use random keypad presses for the number.

The final portion of Zhone is something GPS related. This does nothing for me as of yet, but I wanted to show it anyway.

Exiting Zhone is easy since Illume is installed and functional. First is the ASU launcher with a light blue hue as icons are selected. The next image is a screenshot of the screenshot application to show that GTK works but looks ugly unthemed, but I'm sure that's not really in dispute.

It's been a while since I've seen the keyboard in action, and it's improved quite a bit. I'm not sure if this is a FSO improvement or done to Illume directly, but it makes the Freerunner quite a bit more functional. There's several modes now, including a full QWERTY mode which can be selected. The great news is that it's actually terminal capable!

A few new images that didn't make it onto this page can be found in my Openmoko Image Gallery including a possible bug (the keyboard selection menu doesn't close if the keyboard does) but all told the "interesting" stuff made it's way here.

What can't be put in a photo collection is stability. None, and I do repeat none, of the apps crashed. Suspend and resume are actually working reliably on the Freerunner with a press of the power button for each. The AUX button puts the device into lock mode. My only complaint is that the lock mode still accepts screen presses, meaning that to put the device in a purse or a pocket it needs to be fully suspended else it runs the risk of powering up and down the backlite as keys and spare change collide with it.

All in all, there's promising progress from all different fronts and it's rapidly rekindling my desire to get involved and take control of my phone. Now... Where do I find a good media player...

I grew up in Michigan, moved to Kentucky and then moved out to the Washington DC metro area a few years back. One thing that bugged me when I first moved out what "resale value".

People out here have really messed up notions of resale value. Used items are actually supposed to be cheaper than new items from online resellers because, well, they're used.

I love the market, and you're welcome to charge as much for your crap as you want but understand that charging more than market price is why you won't get my money.

Except for that guy I bought my kegerator from last year - thank you! That was an awesome deal, but I feel bad because I think your new wife forced you into that deal.

Everyone else, your prices suck.

June 26, 2008 saw the United States Supreme Court make a ruling on an issue near and dear to my heart – gun ownership. For those who don't care or simply were unaffected by the ruling, the issue that was being discussed was “does an individual have a right to own a gun in America?”

Conventional wisdom say “Yes” and for nearly two hundred years, Americans have been able to possess firearms, despite increasing regulation and red tape to obtain and carry them. In Washington DC, this regulatory nightmare came to a head. In DC, it was legal to carry a registered firearm if you had a permit. The problem? DC doesn't allow people to register weapons and issues no permits. Now, I object to the ideas of permitting and registration in general, but in this specific issue the combination of permit requirements and non-issuance of permits essentially amounted to an all-out ban.

Dick Heller, a security guard, sued the District of Columbia over this and the lower courts ruled that the US Second Amendment (A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.) covered the “collective” “people” and not an individual. Since DC residents were “protected” by a military, the right was not being infringed. A higher court disagreed, saying individuals do have the right. The District of Columbia people didn't find this acceptable, so appealed the ruling to the highest court in the USA, the Supreme Court.

In short, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 ruling that gun ownership is in fact, an individual right. For the liberty-oriented like myself, the 5-4 numbers are scary. Is “shall not be infringed” really that hard to understand that it splits the court nearly evenly?

Conservatives and miniarchists declared the Heller case a victory because “the government still defends our rights”. Myself and others considered it a loss, because in the ruling they said specifically "nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms."

In short, even though it's an individual right, the government people can still regulate it.

Now, all of the talk of the wording of the Constitution matters very little to me, I consider it a flawed document, built on a flawed premise. That said, a lot of people do cling to the thing as if it's a holy document and the government people have supposedly agreed to follow it's rules, so it's important in my mind to bring Constitutional issues to light to show “government” for what it is – a group of people doing business at the threat of violence.

The District of Columbia, rebuffed by the Supreme Court, has begun a gun registration program and granted amnesty for 180 days to encourage people to register their firearms now. One man, Dick Heller tried to do so this morning. Yes, this is the same Dick Heller who initiated the lawsuit and won. Now that the Supreme Court has overturned the DC ban, he stood waiting for the 7 am registration to open to register his .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol and a .22-caliber revolver, pretty standard fare firearms.

Mr. Heller was turned away.

An unnamed DC spokes-bureaucrat says that “the gun was a bottom-loading weapon, and according to their interpretation, all bottom-loading guns are outlawed because they are grouped with machine guns.”

In a now-famous internet quip.... WTF!

The importance of this distinction is huge. With the exception of revolvers just about every handgun ever produced is a bottom loader. I'm no gun guru but I can't think of a single one that's NOT a bottom loader.

Much in the same way as the DC government people passed laws effectively banning handgun ownership by not issuing licenses, they are still, even after losing in the highest court in the nation, using deceitful methods to skirt around the issue, to comply without really complying.

Let this be proof to everyone who called the Heller decision a "win" that individual right to gun ownership has not, indeed, been protected. Dick Heller, the man who sued and won, is still not able to legally have his firearm.

Let this show the miniarchists out there: Even "winning" is a loss. The government people's actions are all directed towards control for one reason or another, and once they have control they do not give it up. It is the nature of government to expand and grow, not to shrink. Let this case show you, as cases over and over have shown, that you can not defeat government people oppressing you by turning to the government.

It was J.R.R Tolkien who says of his work, the Lord of the Rings, "You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power".

My server crashed last month due to hardware failures and I lost about 3 months of my site, including many pictures, user comments, blog articles and such. I decided then to redo my site because it pissed me off due to limitations, and since nobody reads my blog, I didn't think people would care.

I was wrong twice. Firstly, it appears that people do, in fact read my blog. It's syndicated in several places, linked to by some major electronics sites, scattered throughout the blogosphere. Not only that, but when I posed my hiatus-for-a-rebuild notice, I got several e-mails from people giving me encouragement to keep blogging, tips for restoring my site and so on.

In no specific order, I'd like to extend thanks to Manuel who simply wasn't satisfied with silence, asked questions and made sure it got out to the world. He also encouraged me to blog about building a Django blog, which I may do, or may not do, but it's something that might add more content here, and I always welcome relevant suggestions for that. :)

Thank you Philip, who saw that content was missing and let me know how I might find it again. Afterwards, he and I had a conversation about Openmoko's lackluster website and his contacting of Sean Moss-Pultz. Good to know people are taking steps to get action, rather than simply complaining.

Jeff, who wrote with apologies for unsolicited e-mail honored me. I'm just a regular guy with a blog and my e-mail address is public. I write about what I love, mainly technology (Free Software in specific), liberty and freedom. I'm always happy to answer questions or just shoot the shit, my e-mail is listed in the “Contact Me” link on the side of my site and I do always welcome e-mail. Hell, it was the e-mail I received that really motivated me to keep my site active (the increase in traffic, and wanting to keep that doesn't hurt though...), so if you like my site let me know, it'll keep me doing it.

Thank you Milos, who alerted me that a link to one of my most popular articles was broken and allowed me to fix it. I really like keeping traffic to my site flowing, I do appreciate it.

Thank you David, who took the site recovery bit a step further and actually scoured Google Cache for some of my missing articles, then e-mailed them to me to ensure it wasn't lost.

Er Lern, thank you for being the first to contact me with suggestions after the site failure. I think I got that e-mail literally in less than 24 hours which was amazingly fast considering that I assumed nobody read the site.

Thank you to everyone else who e-mailed and I missed, I'm sure I've missed several. But more than just for sending me e-mail, thank everyone who reads this. It makes me feel awesome knowing that people out there are passionate about the same things I am. It's also good because I see the world in a way that a lot of people don't, and it's a viewpoint that many people aren't used to hearing, so knowing that the messages are getting out makes me feel as if I'm actually accomplishing things. Thank you all, truly.

I planned to stop blogging for a while, intent to rebuild my site as I wanted it using Django. I have found that learning a new programming language and toolkit forces me to adjust my entire coding paradigm. In short, it's not something I've adjusting to quickly. I'm also quietly wondering if I really care about learning Python at all as I've lately been becoming more and more frustrated with computers in general.

Anyway, the world doesn't stop moving just because I stop blogging, and the encroachments upon liberty keep happening, so I feel as if the call of duty is sounding over and over and I'm ignoring it, so... I'm back. I'm going to stick with Jaws for a bit longer, chugging out posts in OpenOffice Writer and pasting them in when I'm done. Really, I think I'd be doing that with Django anyway, since it didn't include spell check. :)

Jaws 0.80 is in second beta, so perhaps that will fix some of my gripes, and since I actually know PHP, perhaps I could expand Jaws out somewhat, but that's neither here nor now.

Just a quick update. On Friday, July June 21, 2008, the server that hosts this website suffered a drive failure. As the techs went in to hot swap and rebuild the drive, the master drive also failed resulting in complete data loss.

Being my personal site, I hadn't been making backups regularly so I lost about 3 months worth of stuff, including the Freerunner review and the Photo tour of the ASU.

I decided at that point that my website sucks. :) I currently use Jaws CMS which is decently good but not great. The reason I chose to use it, though, was because I like pictures and all of the other blogs suck at managing pictures the way I want them – taggable and on my server. Flickr is probably the closest, but I didn't want to be limited to their storage space, service changes and stuff. Jaws lets me put images in multiple albums without duplicating the images, so I used it.

Unfortunately, the AJAX in the admin interface causes conflicts and sometimes I have to reload a page. The search system suck badly, sometimes matching falsely and not displaying matches. But the ugliest part, frankly, is the RSS feed. When I'm editing an article, it auto-saves to draft mode, but for some stupid reason, it actually posts to the RSS feed, so if my article is long (and unless this is your first visit to my site, you know I post long posts often. I actually meant “quick update” and I'm on 250 words.) it actually syndicates a half finished, often broken, blog post which may or may not be updated later.

Because of this, I'm actually writing this blog post in OpenOffice.org Writer which I'll cut and paste into the CMS. Jaws CMS does a remarkably poor job in all of helping me manage my content so I'm ditching it.

I've been trying to teach myself Python, but at work I deal primarily with PHP so I can't really sit down and just hack. I decided to take this opportunity (the drive failure, if you've already forgotten) to force myself to resolve two issues – my site that sucks and my laziness preventing me from exploring Python.

I've decided to try, at the least, to redo my site using Python, and more specifically, using the Django framework which Debian actually packages. :) This means that my normal few-times per week content won't be posted even though there's some infringement of liberty or some advance in Openmoko's progress or something else worth chatting about. Frankly, I'm lazy, and the less content I need to transfer, the happier I am. So this may be my last blog post for “a while” as I learn Django and ask questions and devote my spare time to that for a bit.

In the mean time, this site will remain up, with some broken articles. :)

There is a lot of speculation about the April Software Update (ASU). Is it a single image you install, or is it a line of development? Is it a rebranded Qtopia or something new? How's the sounds quality? What Wifi management tools will there be? Is there a package installer? What does it look like?

I thought I'd take some time today to hopefully answer those questions, and more importantly, show lots and lots of screenshots, because everyone likes screenshots. :)

When you first boot the Freerunner, the screen backlight fades in gradually to reveal the familiar orange and black Openmoko start splash. After a few seconds, the screen turns to the black with white scrolling text that just about every Linux user in the world is familiar with.

Then come the boots. As a bit of geek humor, probably chosen by Raster, there is a pair of boots on the boot screen. A green bar slides in and begins loading. A great example of the early stages can be found on this flash demo.

By default, the ASU image is set to a grid system application launcher.

For those uninterested in this view, there is a bit more unique take on it using the slider mode.

Atop the action at all stages of using the ASU is Illume, which essentially functions as the system tray and task bar. Here, you can launch the keyboard, launch the settings panel, enter the Enlightenment settings (note, this is slated for removal and doesn't directly affect the use of ASU), switch to a running application or close an open application.

Let me visually cover those things, in order. First, the keyboard:

The keyboard is a QWERTY like keyboard that has a dictionary lookup built in. To bring the keyboard down you tap the “qwerty” area of the Illume bar. To begun typing, simply hit a letter. To see a more complete list of words meeting your typed characters, click the white triangle on the keyboard. There is a shift key which displays upper case numbers. If you look, you'll see that some keys are missing. If you make a line on the keyboard going up or down the keymap changes to special characters (!,@./) and numbers, making the keyboard usable on a terminal. Though, in fairness, I didn't check to see if there are CTRL or ALT keys which might affect that use.

The settings panel is opened by clicking the wrench icon on the Illume slider. In here there are settings for all kinds of things. I won't go in depth with them all, the most “visible” is probably the option to set the slider or icon grid launcher modes.

The Enlightenment settings, as an E17 user would recognize, are kind of a “left over” from the development. These settings are planned to be removed, since the functionality of them is either irrelevant for Openmoko or will be absorbed into other applications.

One of the best features of the Freerunner, in my personal opinion, is the ability to utilize GPS without a non-free driver. Because of this, a basic GPS application has been included with the ASU. It's really very much a placeholder or prototype now, as the only thing it seems to do is display a map that can be zoomed or moved around and prompts that it fails to get a GPS fix. I'm not exactly sure of the name of this application, in all honesty. I'm used to calling it “Diversity” thought I've also heard the name “Splinter” tossed around and I'm not sure of what the distinction, if any, is.

The second big hardware change for the Freerunner was the inclusion of wifi. In order to connect to wireless networks, there is a program called “Campwifi” that once launched, probes for networks. While not viable in this shot, I have managed to connect to an open wifi access point “in range” of my apartment and been assigned an IP address. I personally have no experience with wifi at ALL aside from what I've gleaned from reading tutorials over the last few years so I'm not sure if some of the encryption and authentication schemes are implemented – with only one unsecured wifi AP within range of my apartment, it's not been an issue for me yet. Hopefully I'll be able to check that out more as I'm able to shift away from the 1973 and towards the Freerunner as my day-to-day phone.

Another nifty feature of the ASU is the Assassin package manager, a GUI front end to opkg. Once you launch Assassin, you're presented with a list of categories to choose from, and some of those categories contain items that can be installed. So far, there aren't too many packages listed. Certainly far less than show with an opkg –list. It leaves my mind to speculate as to how this is important – perhaps Assassin will present users with action based installs (Install US Maps for GPS) or be used for more than just software applications for things like ebooks and ringtones. With an open platform, the mind runs amok.

Once an application is selected, there's one big “Touch here to install” button which is very simple to figure out what to do. Once pressed, you're prompted again to confirm at which case the install begins and completes.

From the screenshots you can see I installed “openmoko-messages2”, an application from the 2007.02 line that was based on GTK. At one point, when the switch to Qtopia was announced, there were a lot of GTK fans upset. It seemed to die down a little bit when it became clear that GTK would still be usable on the phone so I wanted to be sure I got a shot running a GTK application. It looks hideous because the GTK theme wasn't installed, but any GTK theme could be applied and hopefully there will be a matching one in the future. If there was any remaining doubt, GTK is alive and well within the ASU framework.

Finally, I'll show a few “glitches”. Firstly, the video processing on the Freerunner is slower than the 1973 thanks to the Glamo. I found that after a while of using the device (and with over 40 screenshots, it was “a while”) the transitions (Illume slides down, launched applications slide down) began getting choppy. I found reducing my frame rate to 10 fps helped this quite a bit but was still noticeable. Additionally, NONE of the Qtopia apps would launch in slider or grid mode. Setting the display variable I was able to launch Qtopia Media Player which complained about lack of Qcop and then segfaulted as I closed it. But you'll see that there are no screenshots of the Qtopia apps since they wouldn't launch “normally” for me.

You'll see below that occasionally applications crash. I've been shown the “Enlightenment crashed” white box a few times, and recovery happened. Every now and then, a half rendered Enlightenment window would pop up but not show me anything good. I had to use my tiny screwdriver stylus to close that box, my fingers are too big for that. Lastly, while earlier versions of the ASU had scrollbars, this version does not. However, when scrolling in certain areas, a distortion appears in the area where a scrollbar would be. These, luckily, appeared in screenshots.

The ASU, while certainly not usable as a daily phone, is certainly full of promise! I'll be tracking this closely and writing reviews as applications become more complete and the images become more functional.

Just a small blurb. An IRC friend of mine today sent in a friend because I frequently talk about the message of liberty. It's kind of awkward, in one sense, because I keep wondering why people go "I've got a friend who is pro-liberty, you should talk to him!". I find it questionable because my friend is ALSO pro-liberty and I wonder if it's simply that he doesn't have the same sort of support network as me. I currently live in Maryland, a place where liberty is seldom brought up and even more infrequently the cause of action. I, however, have been to New Hampshire to visit the Keene area activists because I am a Porcupine and will be moving to New Hampshire as part of the Free State Project. I know there is a functional, rational and active group of people who feel so strongly about freedom that they're comfortable tossing the ideas out there.

So I will begin putting up plugs (what I call advertisements for purposes other than making money) on my site, hopefully in a tasteful manner. I began by putting up a banner for Free Talk Live, a podcast I listen to every day because it is 100% pro-freedom. Ian and Mark, the regular co-hosts are both among the Keene area activists I've met and they're great people who both moved from Florida as part of the Free State Project. They're syndicated on over thirty radio stations across the USA and there's one station in Tobago that picks them up. They're also continually rated #1 podcast in the political/cultural section on a respected podcast ranking site.

Everything on their site is free, you can download their podcast 6 days a week totally free of charge. It's one of the many ways I manage to stay hopeful throughout my day and I thought I should pass that on.

I'm finding it hard to report on the police state in America now. Not because it's disgusting to see peaceful people having violence brought against them. It is disgusting. It's not because the public sits by and ignores or worse, rationalizes and endorses, this activity.

It's hard to report on the police state in America because no self-respecting police state article is complete without references to Nazi Germany. The problem is, the more I think on it, the more I realize that even the Nazi's left people alone if they cow toed. In general, you were permitted to live your life in Nazi Germany as long as you didn't speak or act against the military machine.

The Nazi's didn't jail people for having their grass too high. The Nazis, to the best of my knowledge, didn't turn SWAT teams on people for dancing without a permit.

Tom commented on this article to point me to the Swing Kids, a group of Nazi opposing dancers. Thanks Tom! Unfortunately, I'm not sure if this makes me say "Oh, okay, so maybe the American jackboots aren't worse than Nazis" or if it makes me say "Yep, there's proof. Both the Nazi's and the American jackboots do this.."

That's exactly what's happened in Detroit, Michigan. The Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit (CAID), an art exhibit and gallery that has been open for nearly three decades, was spinning music inspired by or created in Detroit. Detroit, once the motor capital of the world, also has a dazzling history of music, being the birthplace of Motown Records and the genre called “Motown”. Detroit is also know as the birthplace of the techno genre, but that wasn't being celebrated this night. As greats like James Brown, Aretha Franklin and The Meters played, patrons of Funk Night danced freely.

Many patrons here come for the atmosphere. Unlike bars and nightclubs, visitors to CAID are interested in music, fun and dancing. A night out is for the enjoyment of it, not hopes of “hooking up”. CAID patrons tended to be more educated, more intelligent and more artistic than the nightclub crowed shunned by many.

The night's revelry ended as military equipped police kicked the door in, ordered patrons “On the floor!” as they panned the crowd of dancers. As CAID patrons complied, police used their feet to push questioning dissenters into the floor.

After terrifying the dancers, police began issuing tickets for “loitering where alcohol was being served illegally”, 130 tickets total. Outside, unknown to the patrons, police tow vehicles were moving cars to the impound lots in scores. Forty-four cars in total the police seized, charging the people $900 each to reclaim their own property, “generating” $39,600 in “revenue” for the city police department, ignoring entirely the windfall the county will take in if and when those loitering fines are paid.

The reason for the raid? Police raided for “dancing without a permit.” According to Aaron Timlin, a man who walked from Detroit to New York wearing a cardboard box to promote an art exhibition and current executive director of CAID, the police visited him on May 30th and informed him dancing would require a permit.

"Everyone thinks it's ridiculous we have to have a permit for dancing," said Timlin. In response to the raid, the tickets and the theft of vehicles, Timlin is organizing an 8-day long festival with live music and dancing. "We're going to dance without a permit. If we get a ticket, we'll fight the ticket and change the law. People should be able to dance where they want.”.

The improvements in Iceweasel 3 are great. The new styling really fits in well with my Gnome desktop. However, as with the migration to any major “point-oh” release sometimes things break compatibility.

For this reason, I have been hesitant to fully move to Iceweasel 3. The improved password manager, the new visual styling, improved searching (you can not enter the title of a page in the address bar and it pulls it up in your list of auto completions) and improved zooming are all great, but when I can't do things I usually do, it's not an upgrade.

One thing I do is play a game called oGame. To enjoy it a bit more, I use two extensions: FoxGame and GreaseMonkey with a script from Userscripts.org. Both of these extensions broke with the upgrade to Iceweasel 3 which has moved from Debian Experimental to Sid, which means my days of 2.0 are numbered.

Luckily, I complain. Having complained in the Libervis IRC channel, netdaemon offered me a suggestion that it was possible to override the extension compatibility check. I'll be damned, there is! Here's how:

• Type about:config into Iceweasel's address bar and click the "I'll be careful, I promise!" button.
• Right-click anywhere. Choose New>Boolean. Make the name of your new config value extensions.checkCompatibility and set it to false.
• Make another new boolean pair called extensions.checkUpdateSecurity and set the value to false.
• Restart Iceweasel.

Unfortunately, FoxGame actually is incompatible with at least the RC 2 version of Iceweasel. So I had to manually disable that one, but Greasemonkey, which I utilize more frequently, works just fine thus far.

Also, at some point my work computer (also running Debian Sid/Experimental) updated to Iceweasel 3 and lost it's back button. This is annoying, but not incapacitatingly so, since you can always use ALT key commands or use the right click menu.

Anyway, to restore the back button simply go to View->Toolbars->Customize and click “Restore Defaults”. Problem solved. Both of these tips today gave me a mostly functional, feature enhanced version of Iceweasel 3 and I'm happier for it.

Yesterday afternoon my wife sent me an instant message that said “It's looking like a hurricane here! It's dark as night and really windy, be prepared, it's moving your way.” For clarity sake, my wife works 50 miles east of where I work, and we both work about 50 miles south of where we live, forming a triangle.

As the storm rolled past her and over me, I didn't think too much of it having experienced storms all of my life. The people around me tend to overreact to storm, however, and there was commotion and bustle which got me out of work, so I'm not exactly complaining.

Come that evening, I decided to get pizza from an out-of-the-way pizza place. It's a place that makes wonderful calzone style sub sandwiches. The chain is from Michigan, where I grew up, but they have franchises around the region. There are a few stores, located several hundred miles away from each other, that have “migrated”; typically as someone from Michigan moved into other areas and missed the chain.

The store is located about 10 or 12 miles southeast of the highway I take on my commute home, so going there tends to be a “special” occasion. Nothing was particularly special about last night, but I was feeling in a good mood and wanted a ham and cheese sub, so I went for it. Traffic to the highway was pretty bad because of the storm and on the George Washington parkway I passed no less than three cars that had been crushed when a downed tree fell onto bumper-to-bumper traffic.

As I was exiting the highway towards the pizza place, I noticed it was unusually dark. For a few seconds I attributed it to the tail-end of the thunderstorm but as I drove closer into the city I realized the area had no electricity. This was more and more apparent as it moved from a single apartment complex to storefront after dark storefront.

There's some kind of strange, privative feeling that settled over me then, a stark reminded that electricity hasn't always existed. I suddenly realized that every movie I've watched about “colonial times” included the odd, persistent “glow” that everything surrounding a major metropolitan area takes. The same luminescence that gives the night sky an orange-red glow. Some call it “light pollution” but that's similar in my mind to calling the Mona Lisa “color pollution”. People like light, and it has a purpose.

Anyway, as I'm driving closer and closer to some central streets in Gaithersburg, I realized something else. My drive was very smooth, which is not normally the case in metro cities.

And then I noticed why.

With no electricity, there were no streetlights.

Now, I'm normally a safe driver, having logged hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of miles (a former professional driver) with no accidents at all. I took my drivers test in over a foot of snow, so it's not always been the greatest conditions either. I'm well aware that other drivers aren't as comfortable behind the wheel as I am.

Another thing to help set the scene is that many American have busy lives, and more so when you get into the city. Gaithersburg is not exactly a “large” city, but in the metro DC area the end of one city is the beginning of another. It could be considered the outer rim of “Washington DC” which means it's decidedly “busy” in it's own right. Gaithersburg residents are busy Americans, which means a large number of them “eat out” at night – what we say when we buy a meal prepared by someone else, usually a restaurant. When the electricity goes out, most people don't have a way to cook food if they have food at all. Normally, you'd get in the car and drive to a local place that has food, but the power was out for a lot of people. This was, after all, a large storm.

So we're talking a large, fairly urban area full of people who must leave the city and go to a city “a few cities” away in order to eat dinner. This means a lot of people were on the road at that moment, most all heading in my general direction; towards the highway.

The notion of rainy, nighttime roads, several thousand cars and no traffic control devices is enough to send chills down my wife's spine, but it was perhaps one of the greatest affirmations of human capacity, and indeed a serious validation of my voluntaryist perspective.

Without the artificial means many people are used to blindly obeying, traffic was moving more efficiently than it normally does. There were no people sitting idle at red lights because the light was red. People with no light pulled to the line, came to a stop, evaluated if they could make the turn safely, and did if they could.

Three lane roads that meet at a 4-way stop worked well too. Rather than sitting in your middle lane as the empty lane next to you had a green arrow, people going in any direction came to a stop, evaluated the situation and acted. In some cases, I noticed a flash of headlights to communicate with other drivers or a wave of the hand to say “Go ahead”.

Free of the lights and signs most people are so accustomed to, there was still order. Free of arbitrary rules, human thought and evaluation created efficiency.

There are very few things more powerful than what I saw last night – because my eyes were open to it I've experienced one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. It was moving in a way that putting words to can't quite describe.

There is no better testament to human capability than seeing order arise when everyone in that situation is obviously treading unfamiliar ground.

What does it take to get this? It takes something jarring before people “wake up”. Watching normal drivers on any given day I see people too confidant, those who will speed through an intersection knowing “the other guy” “has” to stop. Too many people who drive aggressively because they “know” they have the “right of way”. It takes a removal of “all the rules” to remind people that they are responsible for themselves. It takes darkness and uncertainty before they really become aware that they're in control of a ton of metal and enough energy to move that ton of metal at 60 miles per hour. To really make them aware that a press of their foot can send, or stop, their vehicle towards other people doing the same.

It takes people who refuse to blindly follow the direction of a sign, a light or a line. It takes people using critical thinking skills and being responsible. It takes a little bit of uncertainty, concern and respect for other people.

The benefits of this were efficiency. I looked up Gaithersburg on Wikipedia and I see that the metro area has roughly 5 million people in it. I recall that UPS, the parcel delivery company, saved millions of dollars by routing their deliveries to remove left turns.

How much oil might have been saved if all of those 5 million people idled at a red light for 2 seconds less every time they drove to or from work? How much might have been saved if the power went out like that three of four times a year?

When I advocate voluntaryism, I'm often met with fears of chaos. I'm met with fears of chaos at the hands of other human beings. For the longest time, I've held my views with a bit of skepticism – belief with no concrete proof. Until last night. Today, I awoke for the first time confidant and sure that humanity has the capacity to operate without having some government put signs and lights directing their lives every few hundred yards. Today I awoke knowing that human beings, myself and those around me, could operate responsibly. Today I saw on a the “chaos” that the skeptical fear and use government to shield themselves from.

All too frequently I find that most people greatly misunderstand the philosophies of liberty. Perhaps those of use who love liberty are guilty too – very often it seems we are “anti-government” rather than pro-liberty. But as much as those overused cliches are tossed about, I think they still miss the greatest point, one that as a liberty lover even I am just beginning to see is the whole POINT.

Voluntaryists are positive people. We don't dislike the government because they're “big” and we're weak. We don't advocate personal responsibility because we believe we're better suited to survive than others. We don't believe we'd be better off if we had to “cut the dead weight” that many accuse us of believing since we stand opposed to welfare programs.

Voluntaryists are optimists, not pessimists.

Hard to accept? How can someone who believes that we'd be better off without government? How can someone who finds fault in so much be a positive person? Let's dig deep and evaluate our outlook.

Without government, most people think the world would turn to chaos, where the “strong” picked on the “weak”. This assumption believes that without forced order, people want nothing more than to harm other people. They can't explain why they believe this, really. Very few people who use this argument are eager to bash my face in and steal my property, they're good people, it's “the other people” who they fear. A survey of the entire world would find the vast majority of people are good people, but assume everyone else is not. Do you really WANT a society to prosper when you live in fear of “everyone else”?

Voluntaryists reject the idea that “law” is what keeps people “in order”. We love order, just not law. Voluntaryists believe that human beings have specific natural traits – we all must eat, for instance. We all walk in a certain way unless we have a disability. To be human means that certain traits are always inherent. Even our dispositions are affected by our natures, throughout history almost every human being has found ways to communicate with other humans, is this just chance or is there something in our nature that brings this about?

As humans we recognize that each person is inherently different. One individual may be taller, another shorter. One may have red hair, or black or no hair at all. One may be social, another socially awkward. One may be mathematically smart or totally inept at the abstract concepts. There are, for every human being, weaknesses we have and strengths we possess. I, for instance, do poorly with physical and spatial assessment – I can't put a basketball through a hoop with any frequency; I find visualizing complex structures or estimating distance to be difficult. Even my best guess is often “way off”. I have an uncanny ability to recall information. I possess higher abstract reasoning skills than most people I associate with. I'm not better or worse for any of these things, I am merely different.

Those differences are key. Because I can't visualize structures very well, it's difficult for me to build them. Even if I managed that, it would be difficult to make a structure (like my house) sturdy. Because of my weaknesses, I rely on other people in order to prosper. Our differences as human beings are what makes wealth inherent in all of us – from the richest like Bill Gates to the poorest farmer in Africa. To be different is to be valuable.

In building my house, I seek out the value of my neighbor who can visualize and produce elaborate structure. He in turn taps the wealth of the logger who has a green thumb and can make wood, the trucker who can navigate well, the numerically adept accountant who handles the money, the skillful risk analyzer of the bank that financed my home and so on. The differences between humans, and the desire to increase individual wealth means that we must turn to our neighbors. Even the most selfish person gains very very little by hurting and destroying other people.

Humans need not pass laws to ensure order and protection – no law dictates that you hold the door for someone as you're exiting a building, but you'll see this with surprising regularity if you only look. For anyone who doubts the capacity of humans to interact on a voluntary basis, to find exchanges that are mutually beneficial, examine your own daily routine. You'll see the majority of all daily interactions are nothing but these exchanges – my abundant wealth (computer skill, for instance) for your abundant wealth (advertising prowess, for instance) where we BOTH feel we gain in the end. Very few humans fuel their daily routine with violence. Even on an extended network, how many people does the average person know that fuel their daily lives by violence? Voluntary interaction is by far the most common kind, covering the vast majority of our lives.

Those exchanges are the “invisible hand”. The very differences that make us unique create the marketplace.

Why then, do we hate governments? Keeping in mind that all humans have inherent wealth, we look at governments with scorn because governments commit violence and destroy wealth that we can (and indeed, must) tap. When governments pass a law prohibiting the use of drugs, for instance, they're prohibiting a drug dealer from tapping his wealth in a manner that he chooses to. “Surely this man could be growing rice to feed the poor?”. Perhaps he doesn't want to – Richard Stallman could certainly be told to work at Microsoft and it would produce a more stable Windows operating system. But Richard Stallman won't, doesn't want to and should not be forced to give his wealth to Microsoft – he should be free to enter it into the marketplace as he sees best. No person derives their wealth from a single point, either. The only person able to say what would be the best way to enter that wealth into the market is the person who possess it. Remember that the marketplace requires both sides to find benefit in the exchange in such transactions. Would a drug user find the same value in a small baggie of rice? This creates a distortion in the natural balance of wealths possessed by each individual, and artificially devalues certain kinds of wealth.

A single mother, who raises her children in a safe home could create wealth as a babysitter or daycare provider. Because she cares about her own child it is likely that she has the capacity to keep other children safe. This woman possibly can cook as well, and may have some level of capacity as an educator (reading to children is a good thing and does stimulate brain function). Governments “regulating” this

by mandating a certain number of adults to children, a certain width to the doorways (which a residence would always fail), licensing and so on does nothing but make it harder for her to enter her value (she probably has much more time than money) into the marketplace in a manner that would provide her beneficial return. After renovating her home, getting licensing, having inspections and funding all of this, it's likely that she'll not be able to compete price-wise which artificially inflates the wealth-value ratio (called “price”) of her service and devalues her incentive to enter the marketplace at all. Governments, when they aren't actively using violence, diminish and distort wealth.

Sadly, governments tend to use violence as well as the ever-present threats of violence. If a person chooses to exchange his fairly earned (by mutually beneficial exchange of goods and services among willing parties) for a bag of cannabis and smokes it in the privacy of his own home, the government frequently uses force against him. Frequently governments use force to put cannabis smokers in prison or kill them

when they do not cooperate. Imprisoned carpenters are not able to exchange their value, preventing others from tapping it. More so, governments frequently impose theft on non-destructive people in the marketplace, again shifting the natural flow of goods and services artificially, limiting the amount of wealth people in the marketplace can use to build on their existing wealth and in turn reintroduce to the marketplace.

Voluntaryists hate governments because governments initiate violence to back up everything they do. Voluntaryists hate violence because violence harms people. Voluntaryists condemn the harming of other people because free people always produce value. Even when one is stealing from the rich to give to the poor, wealth is destroyed but in the process wealth (be it time, raw materials or human value) is consumed which in the end deprives the marketplace more than the gain that was desired.

We don't dislike the government because they're “big” and we're weak. We dislike governments because we believe everyone is strong and they prevent people from realizing it. We don't advocate personal responsibility because we believe we're better suited to survive than others. We advocate self responsibility because we believe everyone has value and if it be tapped would sustain them. We don't believe we'd be better off if we had to “cut the dead weight” that many accuse us of believing since we stand opposed to welfare programs. We believe that welfare programs simply create excuses not to tap the wealth that people possess. Nobody needs a handout because nobody is valueless.

Freedom is about honoring the choices of our neighbor. Using force and violence against our neighbor because we don't like their choice stands against this idea. In the United States, a land proclaimed by a large portion of it's people to be the “land of the free” it has become more and more clear that the choices of our neighbor are indeed, not respected at all.

I've written before of the growing police state in the USA, which mimics the police state found in the United Kingdom and elsewhere around the world. When I read this story, however, I was taken aback even knowing what I know.

Canton, Ohio, USA has unanimously passed a new bill into law. This bill makes a certain lack of action a criminal offense. First time offenders will be fined $150 and second time offenders can be given fines of $250 and given jail time of 30 days. What is this new crime, you ask?

Failure to mow one's lawn.

Yes, that's right. In today's society, a man who works his days at a reputable job and purchases land and a home in portions of the United States can not choose the height of grass that he finds acceptable for his own land.

It's the type of action needed, says Canton City Mayor William Healy, “in order to clean up our neighborhoods and our city."

Respect for our neighbor's decisions has literally become such an alien concept that failure to mow your lawn can put you in jail. How long until people wake up, drop the “land of the free” platitude and begin to take action.

First they came for the drug dealers and I was quiet because I didn't like drugs.

Next they came for the immigrants and I was quite because I was a natural born citizen.
Then they came for the “religious cults” and I was quiet because I didn't like their way of life.
Later they came for the people with long grass and I was quiet because I thought it unsightly.
Now they're coming for me and there's nobody left to object!

As a voluntaryist and a free marketeer, I believe that people should be free to make their own choices. One of the most important of these choices is the decsion of a parent to pick the course of education best suited to their child.

I am a strong supporter of homeschooling and more so, strongly against the government educating children.

So when I learned today that Doctor's Associates Inc, the parent company that owns Subway, was holding an essay writing contents for children but excluding homeschoolers I decided to take action.

Anyone who supports liberty and homeschooling, please join me and other libery lovers in boycotting Subway until they renounce their policy of discrinination against homeschooling. While I strongly support Subway's right to do this, I believe as a consumer I have an obligation to not support companies that piss on my values.

If you choose to do this boycott, please let them know why.

Doctor’s Associates Inc.
325 Bic Dr.
Milford, CT 06460 CT
Tel. 203-877-4281
Toll Free 800-888-4848

Fax 203-876-6674

President: Frederick A. (Fred) DeLuca
VP Operations: Millie Shinn
Controller: David Worroll

Since I made my purchase of the Neo1973 back in January, I have been doing almost daily reviews of the Openmoko software and posting those reviews to the device owner's mailing list as well as contributing the reviews to the Wiki.

To continue this, Openmoko Inc. has provided me with a Freerunner sample before they even go on sale to developers. Developers and early adopters don't have to wait too much longer now since mass production has begun. As soon as the distribution centers have product to ship, the Openmoko.com store will begin offering the devices for $399 USD (or a 10-pack at $3,690 as part of the reseller system).

For those unfamiliar, the single biggest feature improvement for most people is Wifi capability though the addition of accellerometers opens some creative (and sometimes goofy) avenues to explore. For Free Software enthusiasts, Openmoko has eliminated the need for a non-free GPS device driver so Freerunner users can now make use of GPS features without comprimising the integrity of their devices.

Below, you can see a detailed selection if images I took as I unpacked my new Freerunner.

Unlike the Neo1973 shipping, the Freerunner is less "geeky" and more chic. As a geek, I liked the clamshell of the 1973's packaging, but I had to appreciate the almost jewlery-like feeling I got from opening the Freerunner's case. My wife loved the Freerunner inset in dense foam, and the clean simple presentation of the device first and foremost. The user sees the device they purchased first, rather than fumbling around with manuals and accessories.

The Freerunner doesn't come without accessories, however.

Tucked underneath the dense foam are several useful accessories, including my personal favorite the AC wall charger. It should be noted that this is a pre-release sample so may not even be indicative of what the developers get. I think it is 100% certain that the AC adapter is included though, which eliminates the Linux PC tether almost required to use a Neo1973. In addition, there are two adapters for international electrical sockets, a 512 MB microSD card, a black headset, a USB cable and a LASER/LED/Pen Stylus.

After unpacking the box, I took several more photos which can be seen in my Openmoko Image Gallery but I'll try to find the best ones.

On the right side of the Freerunner you have at the top the AUX button, a headphone jack and a speaker port. On the left side of the device there's a spot to connect an external GPS antenna. Below that is a mini-USB port with the POWER button directly below with a speaker port at the bottom.

For users of the Neo1973, there are two signifigant visible differences. First, the band around the sides is now black, a change I personally like quite a bit but it entirely cosmetic and predicated on personal preference. If you look carefully, you can see that the AUX and POWER buttons are transluent on the Freerunner. This is because the Freerunner has incorporated 3 colored LED's into the hardware to provide traditional visual cues that many people expect in a mobile device. Blink to indicate an unread message or notify of missed calls, or indicate hardware status like "Connected to a Bluetooth device".

A non-visual change affects the USB port. Though limited to USB 1.1 speeds, the Freerunner's USB port is capable of host-mode operation, opening the door to allow the Freerunner to do things like read USB thumb drives (or privacy keys!). There's some apprehension about how this would affect total battery life, but the possibility exists if the user would like to take advantage of it.

Another noticable difference for users of the Neo1973 is the microSD card and SIM card slots. On the Neo, both cards have a slide-lock system which holds the cards in place. On the Freerunner, only the SIM card is slide lock. The microSD slot has an "arm" on each side that needs to be lifted up and to secure, needs simply to be pressed back in. For me, I had to lift each arm individually in order to insert the microSD card. While not hard at all to use, I was expecting a slide-lock, even after being warned. :) I can say with certainty that the Freerunner's parts are a bit sturdier than the Neo's which is great. I'm a rather large guy with big fingers, so not having to deal with thin delicate metal was nice. The SIM card latches firmly on the Freerunner and stays put.

Once the device was reassembled, I took it over to my PC and plugged up the USB cable. Having been told that one of the engineering goals was to allow the Freerunner to power on with USB power only, I decided to try it. I held down the POWER button a bit longer than the Neo1973 requires and immediately noticed a wonderful difference. On the Neo1973 the screen simply illuminates, going from off to bright instantly, but on the Freerunner, the screen "warms up" by fading. This little touch goes a long way to giving the feel that the device is in fact being polished and prepared for a mass market release.

I did notice, however, that the battery indicator showed an almost full battery immediately. This was fine, but it means I'm still not sure what the Freerunner is capable of doing power wise via USB. The critical thing for me is that the device could boot via USB and a dead battery to allow fast charge mode instead of having to wait an hour like you do with a "sleeping" Neo1973. Time will certainly tell on this one.

Soon I will begin evaluating the ASU (April Software Update) which is the beginning of the new Openmoko software stack which incorporated applications from Qtopia while expanding on them and supporting a whole range of software applications, including some promising things in development for Openmoko.

As I have time to use this new software and come up with review criteria, I will begin writing daily (or so) software reviews similar to the ones I've done before. In addition, I plan to continue to track the progress of the ASU as it's adapted to run on the Neo1973.

I just thought I'd drop an update about my favorite Free Software project. :)

Today I got word from Steve (The production manager) from Openmoko Inc. that mass production of the Openmoko Freerunner - the long awaited GTA02 - will begin May 9th, 2008.

So you have 3 steps: build phone. test phone. ship phone.

Then we take orders. I was very adamament about having phones in the disty ready to ship before I opened the web shop.

This means soon, Openmoko Freerunner will be going on sale. :) More great news!

I'll certainly post again when it's on sale, and once I have mine.

"This man is one of the most honorable men of character," said Robert Wall, CEO and president of World Black Belt, a martial arts training firm.

Another witness described how [the man] had helped train personnel from 33 airlines on safety techniques after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, without seeking pay or media attention.

In 1999 an armed gang began demanding payment from a man in a fashion similar to the mafia. While not stated implicitly, the message was clear. Pay up or bad things will happen to you. Being a man of honor he refused to pay. In 2006 this armed gang decided enough was enough. They claimed that by living in their territory, the man had accruded a debt of roughly $15 million dollars, money that (in the hands of the gang) would be used to fund the slaughter of foreigners, train assassins, invade the privacy of innocent people and sustain a regime of brainwashing and intimidation.

Despite the man's offerings of $5 million dollars and pleas to "have mercy", the gang reacted.

[This] should send a loud and crystal clear message to all [..] defiers that if they engage in similar [...] conduct, they face joining him, said Nathan Hochman, a spokesman for the gang. There's no secret formula, he went on to say. Pay up in a timely manner of face their reaction.

***

It plays like a Hollywood movie and conjurs up images of smoky speakeasies and men with bad accents. Men concerned with the fear that the public has seen someone "get away with it".

But the sad, disgusting reality is that this scene didn't take place in a movie that one could get up and walk away from if they found it distasteful. This scene happend in a federal courtroom.

Wesley Snipes, a world-reknowned actor who stared in films such as "Murder at 1600" and the Blade trilogy, was sentenced to 3 years in prison today for refusal to pay taxes. Taxes which would go to fund the war in Iraq, wiretapping of American subjects and the "War on Drugs" which uses violence against people who set plants on fire.

The fact that the gang call themselves "the government" matters very little in the end. The threats, the violence and the intimidation are VERY real. Pay up, or suffer our wrath. The fact that they call their bribe money "taxes" matters little, for a man who harmed nobody will spend the next three years deprived of his livelyhood and seperated (by fear of being shot) from his family.

A crowd stood by as Mr. Snipes exited the court room and said "Wow!" but this crowd was not enough to change the situation. Letters from some of the nations social elite made recommendations to the court for leniency but the only think in the minds of the government thugs was the impression their actions would make on the populace.

On you.

What impression WILL it make? Will you sit by and doublethink this action away, calling the man a "criminal" for refusing to pay blood money? Will you quietly reflect on the fact that 'it wasn't me" and move on?

Will you take a stand and say "This isn't right!". Will you add your voice to that crowd, and do exactly what those goons feared?

Will you say 'You have no authority over me!"?

For the past several years, I've been a proud supporter of the Free Software Foundation. The ideals of Free Software have always rung true to me, and I've not only adopted Free Software solutions in my home (even my wife runs GNU/Linux) but advocated for others to evaluate what they find important and adopt free software themselves.

So when I pulled my funding last month from the FSF, I was asked "Why?" from some friends. "Do you not care about free software anymore?"

I still care deeply.

Free Software is, at it's most very basic for me, a matter of property rights. To me, it is an affront to property rights to sell or give something someone and enforce conditional restrictions upon them. If Oster sells you a toaster, they have NO right to prevent you from taking that toaster apart, studying it, adapting it and using those adaptations in the marketplace. Free Software then, has ALWAYS been about me holding my right to study that which is mine - and affirms that everything on my computer is in fact MINE.

Due only in part to Free Software, the activist nature within me has been awoken. Even more than with free software, I feel it's important to stand for what I beleive in and make decisions that reaffirm that believe. The newest belief if that government, in some way shape or form, is the cause of most of the day-to-day gripes I have. That isn't the point of this blog entry though...

What has become clear to me is that the Free Software Foundation is not truly comitted to user freedom. Furthermore, they're quite willing to use the guns of government to enforce their "freedom". Freedom is free market freedom. Freedom is, at it's very base, the right to choose. I'm still firmly comitted to the ideals of Free Software, but I stand against the Free Software Foundation, as I stand against anyone, who feels it's morally justifyable to use the guns of government to enforce compliance with ANYTHING.

If free software is better, free software will stand it's own ground, and hundreds of men with military weaponry can't part with it. Bad ideas, however, don't seen the threat of violence to be abandoned, as it makes no sense to continue with it. Free Software stands and fights it's own battles, using only consumer opinion to oppose Microsoft and Apple and Adobe. I'm quite content to leave it there, and in order to do that I found it necessary to pull my funding of the Free Software Foundation.

Viva Libre!

As a child going through the schools setup, administrated and funded by the US Government (which in turn gets it's money by taxes) I was taught to hate Nazi Germany. Not only did they burn Jews for being Jews but their police state laid waste to all of the values that people faught for and died to protect. Soldier-police could barge into a person's home to carry out searches under the guise of searching for closeted away Jews. This pretense, however, was abandoned as the soldier-police were granted the power to arrest on suspicion that someone had comitted a crime. Asking the solider-police "Why?" was forbidden and would put you on a list of "Enemies of the State".

This invasion of a person's home, lives and livelyhood was evil, something all vigilant Americans shouldn't tolerate.

On the flip side, we chanted the Pledge of Allegiance in a symbol of blind patriotic faith. Once done, we'd sit down and study about how the American patriots rose up against British tyranny to found "the best nation in history". Part of this indoctrination includes the premise that the checks and balances created a nation in which a police state couldn't form.

In that false sense of security, the majority of the population stopped being weary.

April 11th 2008 saw what some media outlets are calling the "largest regional crime crackdown ever taken". Large is an understatement. This undertaking, given the US Military-style name "Operation Sudden Impact" included agents from 53 federal, state, municipal and local agencies to apprehend terrorists.

Terrorism, huh?

Channel 5 News in Memphis, Tennessee reports Federal agencies raided several Memphis businesses in a coordinated effort to find information about possible terrorism ties.

The operation has been named known as "Sudden Impact."

At the same time, it is also being reported that The 100 sheriff's deputies working Saturday night and Sunday morning also recovered 12.2 grams of heroin.

What this says is pretty clear: Drugs are terrorism in the eyes of the police. Futhermore, with the police now working with the military (the National Guard was one of the 53 agencies involved) to "fight crime" AND "fight terrorism" it's pretty clear that under the eyes of the soldier-police crime itself it terrorism.

They issued citations for 202 traffic violations.

Speeders are now terrorists. If there was any doubt that the soldier-police were here in America, armed and ready to act, this should eliminate it all. Speeders are terrorists. "What we have found traditionally is that terrorists are involved in a number of lesser known type crimes," said Mark Luttrell, Shelby County sheriff.

Like the Nazi Ghestapo, all pretense of fighting a public enemy has even gone. The FBI along with hundreds of officers said they are looking for anything out of the ordinary. This statement from a national news outlet (CBS) has a two-fold impact. Firstly, doing something "out of the ordinary" itself constitutes police-soldier attention and secondly, but NOT attaching outrage and disgust to this statement, that it's already become common practice.

Welcome to America, with liberty and justice for all.

This way please.