General

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.

Andy's blog said "everyone was doing it" so I have to too.

history | awk '{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}' | sort -rn | head

On my work computer, as my non-root user (kevin) I get:

96 ssh
66 su
30 cd
29 sux
29 rm
23 screen
22 time
21 ls

17 /opt/cinderrat-2008-03-28/bin/firefox
15 apt-get

Also on my work machine, I get the following as root:

181 apt-get
84 /opt/dfu-util/bin/dfu-util
45 nano
32 ls
24 mount

19 cd
10 apt-spy
7 rm
7 modprobe
7 iptables

For those who don't know, dfu-util is the application used for flashing Openmoko images to the phone. Cinderrat is a CVS build of Mozilla's Firefox browser (which ends up being called Minefield anyway, defeating the point of rebranding).

What does your history say about you?

There's an adage that states "A picture is worth a thousand words". I've had many experiences before where I agreed, but today... Today, I have that experience in the way it was meant to be. I've seen a picture that brings to mind a thousand words that I can't possibly put to paper (so to speak).

This monument was made in New York, USA. It was shipped to the southwest United States and erected on a concrete circle to stand proudly as a symbol of the American friendship with the bordering nation of Mexico. Clearly, the monument was designed to stand tall and allow people to look at it from all sides, walking along the concrete circle and crossing into both the USA and Mexico to see it entirely.

There is another adage that springs to mind, shaded in tones of irony and disdain...

"Good fences make good neighbors."

I'm a Debian user. One of the strongest points in the Debian world is the package management system that is both binary and source based. In addition to the software, Debian maintains strict rules regarding the package management process to ensure high-quality packages with the minimum of conflicts.

Sometimes, however, those conflicts occur especially running the "rolling" testing or unstable distros. Frequently the issues come when updating "sets" that contain many packages, such as KDE or Gnome, when one piece didn't build but other chunks are there. Being able to pull down the source code and build it on your own system before it hits your mirror can be a lifesaver.

In addition to building missing packages, Debian's source based repositories are the only "safe" and "easy" way to mix sources - something I've personally had to do to leverage the large number of packages in GetDeb that are designed for Ubuntu but will build and play nice with Debian systems.

I've been meaning for a LONG time to sit and write out a tutorial on how to easily use the tools, but someone else has done basically that so I'll merely link there and call it a day. :)

http://www.ducea.com/2008/03/06/howto-recompile-debian-packages/

Do you remember PogoBall?

Yeah. Me too. :(

Today I've done a new review of the 20 February 2008 snapshot of OpenMoko for the Neo1973.

The full review can be found http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Snapshot_review/2008-02-20

The major news is that today SD support has returned, which means I can recommend all users to upgrade to today's image and kernel. :) Today also saw decent (almost 50 seconds less!) improvement to boot time.

These reviews make me feel good. :) I got thanked by Sean Moss-Pultz (CEO of OpenMoko Inc.) himself, and have had developers give me info on changes, causes and plans for the distribution. It feels awesome to be able to help the project even though my coding skills are sorely lacking.

I'm a bit concerned about where to go from here. For the most part, my reviews cover the major functionality of the device. Phone calls, SMS messages and media capability. I don't touch GPS because it requires non-free.

There are applications that I don't review also because I consider them less than critical (like the fact that there are 4 sudoko games) but at this point I'm thinking that I have time to check the "less than critical" things. I also really want to begin moving into building a realistic, step-by-step wishlist. The audio system is in place now so the phone rings, but most people consider multiple ringtones a basic feature. Profiles are also pretty basic (phone in vibrate only mode, for instance) and don't exist.

I've asked the device-owners list to give input on how to improve the review and where to go from here. :)

Yesterday I forgot my USB cable so my phone died and I was unable to flash the 12 Feb 2008 image. No review. :)

Today's marked the first 2.6.24 kernel in the official OpenMoko snapshot pool. It also broke quite a bit because the rootfs contains the 2.6.22 kernel modules. :)

Phone functions didn't work, SMS didn't work and my 1GB media card didn't work so the ability to play music has been greatly decreased.

General users are urged to stay with the 11 Feb 2008 snapshots while moderate to advanced users are urged to test and report on the new snapshots.

The daily images were not built while the staff of OpenMoko Inc enjoyed the time off for the Chinese New Year. :) Now that the holidays are over, OpenMoko images have resumed.

The full review can be found at http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Snapshot_review/2008-02-11

The biggest change today comes in the form of improved sound. The review hits on this when I mentioned that ambient noise is echoed a LOT less, and that the "air" sound is gone. Another undocumented improvement is that sound volume of the ringtone is now good, meaning I can hear the ring of the phone while in my car with music up loud. :)

Erin Yueh of OpenMoko has also submitted instructions to the OpenMoko device-owners mailing list on how to remove the crappy multi-tap input and replace it with the matchbox keyboard. While neither solution is good (both are considered horrible and where one lacks features that makes it useable, the other has bugs that makes it unusable) I personally prefer the matchbox keyboard.

I've also ammended the review process in regard to GPS. On the Neo1973 GPS requires the use of a non-free driver, and efforts to reverse engineer it are horrifically understaffed. For this reason, GPS doesn't work out of the box. Despite some community members insisting on providing this information in the review, I consider the use of non-free software to be unethical AND contrary to the stated mission of OpenMoko - my reviews now reflect this by adding in three new critera for reviewing of GPS functionality.

For the record, the GTA02 (OpenMoko Freerunner) has corrected this problem, and the GPS on it "speaks" standard protocol so no driver is needed to make it work.

My recommendation is that Neo users upgrade to the 11 Feb 2008 image to reap benefit from the improved audio settings.

I've been obsessed for a while. Last night I finally did it: I bought an Element.

I ended up driving 8 hours to get him but I got him and that's all that matters to me. :D

The drive from New Jersey to Maryland got him quite dirty and today I gave him (and 'Bu) a bath but it was SO cold that the rinse water froze.

I've transfered all of my stuff from 'Bu to Bluebeard now and this image shows the servers in there.

I'm happy!

Lindsay (my wife, for those of you who don't know) has been without a car for almost a year now, since her last one, Patches, died.

This lack has been wearing on her and we began the hunt to find her the perfect car in the perfect price range. For a while, this hinged on the Honda Civic hatchback since being a hatchback was one of her requirements. We discovered over time that the Civic simply wouldn't work. Lindsay still wanted it, but her logical side told her no.

Even more, it told her she wouldn't be happy with any purchase since she was still undecided with exactly what she wanted.

Last week Lindsay gave me the directive "Find an Element". If you know I am an Element fanatic. Don't ask my why but I've been in love with that vehicle since I test drove it on a whim looking for cars for big guys. Since then, I've been a memeber of the Element Owners Club and I've even got an Element section of my photo gallery.

Come Thursday evening I was informed I'd been approved for financing on an Element and I'm THRILLED! After SO long not having one, I am gonna get one. Yay!

The fact that I'm getting an Element is awesome, to the point where it even overshadows what SHOULD be better news... I paid off 'Bu. :) I felt pressured into buying Bu many years ago and have come, for the most part, to resent that car. On Friday, I did an early payoff on it and it is MINE. This makes room in the budget for the Element, and gives Lindsay a car to drive.

I haven't really slept a whole night since being told I was approved. :)

I finished my OpenMoko review today. In general, this image is good.

The full review can be read at http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Snapshot_review/2008-01-31

Boot time is back in line.

SMS works.

Calls work (but still require "the fix" for good sound quality on my side).

Media player works for audio, still no video (and it may never happen on GTA01)

Battery life seems decently improved but still not "good". No hard and fast tests done there.

My recommendation is for all Neo users to use this image, it's the best thus far. :)

Today I reviewed the 30 January 2008 rootfs and kernel images.

Overall, this was a giant leap backwards. Stability has suffered which prevents the use of SMS to the fullest and prevents the use of media playback.

In addition, I found and reported a bug where missed calls were reported twice.

Bootup time jumped up by about 40 seconds.

In general, I suggest NOT flashing the 30 January image, preferring the 29th. The kernel is, as far as I can tell from the filenames, unchanged.

I've noticed that many people who own Neo1973 devices simply don't update every day. There are several ways to do this, one being the apt-get reminiscent application called ipkg (or opkg, the official OpenMoko fork). Another way, particularly useful in rolling distros (like Debian or OpenMoko) is to install a new image.

I choose to install fresh Debian images every weekend and I choose to install fresh OpenMoko images every day. Since people are reluctant to flash a non-working image (which would erase all of their contacts, scripts and hacks) frequently I decided I'd begin documenting it when I do.

Today, I published my first review of the OpenMoko snapshots, since it's finally good enough for me to use daily as a phone and SMS device.

http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Snapshot_review/2008-01-29

I'll summarize them here, but the real good stuff is in the wiki. :)

Summary:

Sound quality on the phone sucks because it picks up ambient noise, luckily a fix has been identitifed!

The multi-touch input method sucks, I think.

Video playback is half-there, i.e. Audio only.

Music playback is better and improving, a LOT less skipping versus a week ago. There's a hack to do even more.

Calendar mostly works.

SMS works.

There seems to be some confusion with exactly what OpenMoko is.

The most simple explanation is that OpenMoko is a software framework designed to empower users of mobile devices. OpenMoko is to the Neo1973 what Gnome is to a PC. The analogy is particularly fitting, since Gnome and OpenMoko are both GTK based.

Keeping with this analogy, another "environment" that can be found on the Neo1973 is Trolltech's QTopia which is, like KDE, based on QT.

Most of the hype around the Neo is because of OpenMoko (or perhaps the other way, without OpenMoko the Neo would be ignored) and OpenMoko is what my personal interest is in so I will begin today by explaining just what is "in" an OpenMoko application from the perspective of a user.

Below is an image of the "home" screen, the starting point for all OpenMoko adventures.

The very top of this image is the "taskbar". A closer examination is below.

In the section that displays the words T-Mobile" is the name of the application you're using. On the home page, this displays the name of the GSM network you're connected to. In this case you see "T-Mobile" since that is my cellular carrier. When the phone is first booted (or when GSM is first turned on) this may say “Registering...” as the phone searches for your network.

To the right of the words "T-Mobile" is a kind of dashboard or system tray. The first icon is of a small keyboard, clicking this brings up the matchbox keyboard, used for entering text. If the keyboard is open, clicking this icon will close it.

The icon directly to the right of the keyboard is the Bluetooth Logo. Clicking this icon brings up a menu allowing you to "Power up Bluetooth radio", "Power off Bluetooth radio" or check "Bluetooth Status". This allows you to shut off unneeded Bluetooth capability for added security or to preserve battery life.

To the right of the Bluetooth logo is a USB icon. This icon indicates that a USB cable has been plugged in that is capable of transmitting data. This icon does not appear when “dumb” USB-style cables, such as car chargers, have been plugged in. Tapping on this icon does not present the user with options, it is there only as an indicator.

The next icon represents the GPS menu. As of today this icon does nothing and is not representitive of the GPS's status.

Next to the GPS icon is a GSM signal meter. Most mobile phones have an indicator like this, showing the relative strength of the cellular signal they have. Typically, the more bars you have, the stronger your signal and the more clear and stable your phone conversations would be.

To the right of the signal meter is the battery indicator. This indicator shows roughly how much power your battery has remaining to power your device. A fully filled green battery icon indicates full charge where an icon that is not filled would be almost powerless. This icon can indicate various intermittent states. When connected to a powered USB cable the phone enters “Quick Charge” mode and this icon displays a white zig-zag lightening bolt image.

Below the taskbar is an action panel. This panel varies from application to application but in general it indicates actions a user may take. On the home screen, these actions are, from left-to-right:

Launch the “Dialer” application (Make a call) Launch the “Contacts” application (View your address book) Launch the “Messages” application (Send and read SMS Messages) Launch the “Tasks” application (Set or view important events)

Below the launcher is the main body which contains a digital clock and the date.

In addition to displaying the time and date, this pane will display notification of missed calls below the date. This is the main area to present information to the user – what this section of the screen displays is highly dependent on the application that is currently running.

Tabs for your currently running application appear below this pane. These tabs are different depending on the running application but the concept behind them is uniform to all OpenMoko applications. For instance, the Dialer application has two modes, a keypad mode and a list of all past calls. This section has two buttons in the tabs panel to switch between these modes. I will go in-depth regarding options with each specific application later.

Today is day three with my Neo1973. It is well know by owners of the Neo and members of the OpenMoko development community that the GTA01 suffers many power management issues. Today, I got the first taste of those issues myself when I forgot my USB cable.

The Neo runs on a "basic" mobile battery and it packs a devent punch. A sharp touch screen, GPS, GSM, Bluetooth, speakers and a backlight. In addition, the CPU and memory consume power as they're used. This means, without proper power management systems on the OpenMoko platform, the Neo's battery life is rather short - in my case, about 5 hours.

There's another problem - the power controller firmware doesn't flag "critical" use - what this means is rather than shutting down when the phone's power gets to 5% it will continue to draw power, right until the battery is 100% drained and the system dies - or as SpeedEvil says, "rests" - mercilessly. Why is this so important? Because the Neo has an advantage called "Quick Charge" - when powered on (i.e. running the Linux kernel) it is able to tap the full power it recieves in the USB charging port resulting in a faster charge. However, when the phone is NOT running Linux (dead or running the bootloader, u-boot) it draws about 1/5th of that power resulting in painfully slow charges. So a phone that has "rested" totally need to be slow charged for about an hour before it has enough power to boot into Linux and enable quick charge.

The promising part is the reasons for the total battery death are know and can and will be fixed over time. That's not so much of an important thing.

What IS important to me is that pondering on this caused a paradigm shift. Having been a GNU/Linux user for the past several years (almost a half decade now?) I've seen several Linux kernel release announcements from the exciting release of KVM to things I considered mundane - drive I/O improvements or some such.

One specific area I've always deemed unimportant - power management. Up until recently, it never mattered to me as I'm a full-time desktop user. I hate laptops and have always found them to be novelties. Now, having really looked at how dramatic this is on my Neo, I have a new appreciation for the time and energy that kernel hackers put into these things - and I realize that every patch submittited is someone else's "power management"; their issues that everyone else is oblivious to.

Taking this track along a bit more, I realized just how powerful the Free Software community is. Until today, I've never thought about power on my computer before. The more CPU speed needed, the more power it consumes. The more memory swaps, the more power. More HD? Bright screen? MORE POWER!

My friend Danijel finds a connect between being a geek and "being green" - I do not. Personally, I feel that the concept of Global Warming (implying it's our 'fault' and that we actually have the capacity to screw a planet over in under a hundred years - or more crazily, that we have the capacity to "fix" it if such things were true) to be laughable. I don't, however, think we can ignore issues of pollution, energy consumption and waste - just the opposite in fact. I think these issues are SO important that, like Freedom, they should be addressed on their merits alone, without propaganda scare tactics of an impending global catastrophy to motivate people to do something about it.

That said, until today, my eyes were closed to the sheer about of waste generated by shitty code. The FSF has been pushing that angle for a little while with the Bad Vista campaign, but this isn't an attack on Vista because it applies to us - users of software libre - just as much. How much electricity are we wasting because of crappily optimized code?

Think about this for a moment... There are datacenters FULL of servers on redundant power systems. Each of these servers is running some sort of AMP stack, spinning hard drives and swapping bits around in memory. If Apache itself has a bug that causes just a bit of unneeded movement it has a cascading effect running 24 hours a day on hundreds of machines. How much energy is being consumed because a developer didn't think about being efficient while writing his code?

Free Software users and developers have an added kind of power, the power to consume less. The amount of waste generated by that hypothetical Apache bug is decently large, but imagine now if the bug was in Linux itself - now it's affecting desktop users and laptop users as well as a lot of servers. This isn't merely a case of "bloat" because even on very slim, "minimal" systems it's possible to be doing more than is strictly needed.

We all need to expand our horizons sometimes and I'm glad for having the chance to have done it here with the Neo - it makes me feel powerful. :) Pun intended, unless it's tacky. Then I won't own up to it.

On January 2nd, I purchased a Neo1973 Base from direct.openmoko.com.

My first interaction with FIC, the company that manufactures the Neo, was that of excitement. They have a decently beautiful site that highlights exactly why one would want the Neo – freedom, hackability, being on the cutting edge and having a sexy looking device. I felt no qualms at all with inputting my credit card number and shipping info. Immediately I got a confirmation via e-mail and everything was good.

As I waited excitedly the next day, checking my e-mail every few minutes to see if the confirmation had arrived (did I mention I was excited?) I began to get a bit annoyed by the end of the day. I then checked out the OpenMoko Wiki and found some information regarding the shipping procedure. I found there two things of interest:

Firstly, the price listed on direct.openmoko.com is an estimate. FIC is based in Taiwan, not the USA, so the USD amount I saw was the “target” - they would actually charge my debit card in New Taiwan Dollars in an amount equal to the current exchange rate.

The second thing I learned was that order processing took 3 to 5 days. Okay, “fine” I told myself. I could restrain my excitement.

It wasn't until January 8th my debit card was actually charged and I received confirmation that my order was processing. Perhaps I'm spoiled by NewEgg's wonderful shipping procedure but I consider a 6 day turn-around to be horrific. In addition to being a software libre geek, I am also a home brewer. In home brewing I deal with specialty supply shops to purchase my hops, grains and yeast. Some of these shops are run by retired military vets with little internet experience and some are decently skilled in the internet but in any case they can still manage to have my order packaged, shipped and at my door in a week – I fully expect a company called FIC (First International Computer) to have their order system automated enough to process orders efficiently. I console myself with the notion that they've got a room full of hackers plugging away to get the GTA02 “mass market ready” who simply can't be bothered to check e-mail and fill out UPS invoices.

Later that night I got confirmation that my package had shipped via UPS and included was a tracking number. I excitedly (again, did I mention how excited I was?) plugged the tracking number in to UPS's site and found that my package would be delivered on... the 14th! Have I really been THAT spoiled by NewEgg? I had debated over getting “expedited” shipping on one of many forms, but I decided against it - “standard” UPS shipping was decently fast, I reasoned. I guess not – this package was going to take almost a week more to get to me from California (for the record, NewEgg ships from Whittier, CA most of the time too). It seems NewEgg's “standard” shipping is NOT UPS's “standard” - lesson learned.

The weekend wait for the Neo was pretty easy, I managed to brew a beer on Sunday using my new Barley Crusher, so time went by rather quickly. Sunday night I decided that I was going to drive my wife to work, and rather than go to work myself immediately, I would drive BACK home and await the Neo's arrival. Luckily, my job offers enough flexibility that I'm able to do that without much issue.

At 11:09 am, my Neo arrived. My decision to return home was a good one – FIC ordered a signature before delivery. I normally HATE when companies do that (With 6 hour long delivery windows I can't afford to take a day off work to sign for a package. I work 55 miles from home so picking up my package from a UPS facility ALSO requires I miss work. Sign for packages = bad). In this case, however, I was a bit happy, since it was a rather expensive shipment – and I was pretty sure insurance wasn't part of UPS's “standard” shipping either.

Above is the box that arrived at my door. It was a pretty plain box, no fancy buzzers or bells (I truly didn't expect them but I have to make this dramatic – did I mentioned I was EXCITED?) and attached to the top was a packaging slip. I opened the box with my keys to find that there were blocks of very thick black foam covering packing peanuts. Buried beneath the peanuts was a bubble-wrap packed white box. This foam was very thick and in general the whole thing was well packed.

Inside the bubble wrap was a clamshell box that I thought was inventive. My wife has been in the printing industry since high-school so printing and packaging are her passions, I suppose it's rubbed off on me.

Once opened the clamshell splits again (once each way) to reveal the “goodies” that I've been so long awaiting.

I won't go over every piece in the box but every piece has been photographed by me, if you're interested in seeing those images please check out the OpenMoko album of my image gallery. The Neo handset itself was enshrined in the familiar anti-static anti-UV bags but it was the first time I'd personally seen self-adhesive anti-static bag – it was kind of neat.

All of the contents of the clamshell unpacked. There's the carrying case, lanyard, headset, spare ear buds, USB cable, stylus, battery, memory card and Neo handset.

While photographing the handset, I noticed that the screen itself seemed very reflective and I often saw myself in my own shots. This worried me, since I figured if it reflected my image it would also have horrible issues with glare when in normal use.

Eager to “get on with it” I held down the POWER button for about 4 seconds and the phone gave the smallest of shudders as the vibrator pulsed for a moment and the screen flickered to life. For anyone who has read articles about OpenMoko on the Neo you've heard “the screen is nice” but it's impossible to take a picture that shows exactly how sharp this screen is. When the backlight came on I was greeted with a black and orange splash screen which quickly gave way to a “typical” Linux boot up – Tux at top and white text on a black background. As small as the text was it was still remarkably clear – just so small it's hard to read.

The Wiki explains this very clearly, so I wasn't alarmed by it, but the very first boot ends in a kernel panic. The “simple” answer is that there's no software other than the Linux kernel and the boot loader (u-boot) itself, so it fails to load anything. End users won't have this happen to them (OpenMoko will be DOA if it's required) but developers will have to flash their own kernel, root file system (rootfs) and (potentially) u-boot image.

At this point, I realized I was “pushing it” by not going to work, so I packed up my Neo and accessories, uploaded my pictures to my wife's Ubuntu system, crashed it and then went over to my Debian system to burn my newly taken Moko images to CD and then went to work.

At work I began my “flashing” after reading up on the Wiki. What was slightly confusing for me was the out-of-date nature of the Wiki. While it's pretty clear once you understand some terminology for someone “new” it can be quite scary – the term “bricking your device” is used enough to scare the hell out of me and I'm fairly comfortable tinkering with “internals”. A quick post to #openmoko on Freenode led me to a how to find daily build images page which kicked me over to buildhost. The recommendation I got was pretty much “Use the newest images” - this makes a TON of sense since the software is rapidly changing.

Flashing the Neo itself was a trivial task and I suppose it will get even easier once the OpenMoko build tools become packaged for popular distros like Debian and Ubuntu. In my case, it meant plugging in the USB cable to my computer and my Neo, downloading dfu-util and compiling it – the whole process took about 30 second so it's a FAST compile as well as simple. I then downloaded the uImage file and the rootfs image for the GTA01 (about 48 MB combined), launched u-boot (hold AUX, power the Neo on) and issued one command to flash the kernel to the Neo. The second command flashed the rootfs to the Neo – a slightly longer process that took about 13 minutes. The downside to this flash is that once the phone enters u-Boot mode it will power down after 60 seconds of inactivity and it doesn't consider USB transfer to be “activity”. This means every 45 seconds or so I pressed the AUX button to keep things “alive”. I'm sure I looked stupid to my office mate, but oh well. (For the record, there IS a solution for this but I was excited and just wanted the thing to work). Once the flashing was complete I restarted the Neo and it booted without problems (no kernel panic!). This time, once the splash screen was done I was greeted with a whimsical sounding chime (audio works!) and the phone proceeded to load my home page.

At this point I hadn't charged the device or installed the SIM or microSD cards, so I powered down, installed them and powered back up. The Neo doesn't do a “quick charge” unless the device is powered on so unless it's totally dead, it needs to be on to charge.

I worked on “work stuff” for a few hours before turning my attention back to my Neo. This time I decided I'd play with GSM and attempt to make a phone call. This entire time the top toolbar was saying “Registering...” which alarmed me – was my SIM card incompatible? There is currently an open bug pertaining to 3G SIM cards (mainly AT&T ones, but possibly others) and I was afraid mine was affected. I pulled open