Rants

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.

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. :)

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.”.

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

"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.

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."

Do you remember PogoBall?

Yeah. Me too. :(

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.

This month’s issue of Wired Magazine had an article in it about LaLa, a CD swapping service.

In the article, Wired’s Cliff Kuang wrote “The arrangement exploits a loophole in copyright law: While distributing duplicates is verboten, it’s perfectly legal to trade your own property.”

The fact that the world has become so confused and brainwashed by copyright made me rather angry, so I decided to write a letter to the Editor of wired. My letter is below:

I am a subscriber to Wired magazine (or more specifically, my wife is). While reading over the issue this month, I saw a line in specific that brought me nearly to a rage.

Specifically, in Cliff Kuang’s article about Lala the line “The arrangement exploits a loophole in copyright law: While distributing duplicates is verboten, it’s perfectly legal to trade your own property.”

The world has been brainwashed by the concepts of “Intellectual Property” far too long, and this line has proven the point exactly. “Intellectual Property” is a fallacy, it specifically refers to three separate things, patent law, copyright law and trademark law. For years the RIAA and other copyright trolls have been trying to equate “sharing” with “stealing” (stealing deprives the owner of the use of a thing, sharing does not. Copying a digital song makes more, the owner still has the same control over their copy) and has been criticized by the geek and educated community.

To see, however, that a Wired writer has also been so badly brainwashed that he could imply that trading PHYSICAL PROPERTY is even remotely questionable makes me wonder just how “in touch” Wired actually is. Since the staff of Wired obviously don’t understand the political barriers faced by technology today, I will not be renewing my subscription, and urging others not to, unless Wired manages to change my opinion before it expires.

-Kevin Dean

I was reading today, like i usually do, and began to get irritated by a phrase that I see repeated over and over: The Linux Community.

Now, this is not to say that there aren't people devoted to GNU/Linux, this is to say that there is not a single community. Communities have common goals, values and ideals. Truthfully, when it comes down to it, GNU/Linux has one of the weakest "communities"; we don't even agree about the purpose of having GNU/Linux!

I use GNU/Linux because it is Free Software. I specifically use Debian because I like the way that it is implimented and because the Debian Project's Free Software Guidelines give me marginal confidence in what I'm installing.

There are people who install SimplyMepis to add non-free software to their system, considering Debian's "lack" of non-free packages to be a problem. "Opinions are like assholes", it's been said, "everyone has one" and they almost always stink.

I don't have a problem with opposing view points, I do, however have a problem with publications (that focus on monetizing GNU/Linux) trying to hone in on the "Linux Community". You're "insight" is misleading in many cases. "The Linux Community" does not want restrictive applications ported to GNU/Linux. "The Linux Community" does not oppose Microsoft's Evil Marketing. "The Linux Comunity" is not vibrant, fragile, touchy, quasi-religious.

We are individuals. We all have our own reasons for using GNU/Linux, and even when some of those reasons overlap, the motivations behind them often differ.

PC World reported today that Fragmentation Threatens Mobile Linux Momentum.

At first glance, I was reading over this article thinking that it may be a prudent argument, of course application developers want their applications to run on many different devices.

It was not until I got to this point that I realized why this argument is completely irrelevant, or at least misleading:

This problem hurts users interested in applications that are incompatible with their handsets. Also affected are software developers who have to make multiple versions of the same application for different handsets.

Having been in the Free Software world for so long, I almost forgot - seriously - that in some parts of the industry, people who WRITE the applications still insist that THEY should be responsible for every aspect of them. Rather than pass the source off to the framework developers, they bear the burden of patching, debugging, testing and deploying the following things.

And then I realized that this article didn't really discuss application vendors, it discussed restrictive application vendors.

Vodaphone "will soon require that all of their handsets run only two or three specific operating systems as a way to ensure that applications will work across all phones".

"Without consolidation, they see costs related to supporting mobile Linux soaring"

Mobile vendors, I have a simple solution - liberate your software! License your applications under a Free Software license and extend you applications to the users of those devices. Nokia can show you a good way to start.

By leveraging the power of the community, you can reduce deployment costs, ensure higher compatibility and, best of all, stop supporting an industry that believes it can exist only by subjugating it's customers.

Viva Libre!

Danijel Orsolic (Libervisco of The Libervis Network) and I were having a chat yesterday, inspired by his article "Merging Open Source and Free Software".

Generally, he feels that it's time to return to using the Free Software moniker instead of Open Source, and create an organization called "The Free Software Business Initiative" to (like Bruce Perens's original goal) enlighten business to why freedom is important. While I agree that it is important for show businesses why freedom is important, I disagree with his hope of "merging" Open Source into Free Software.

Why?

Because people who use the term "Open Source" have rejected the freedom aspects of the software. They rejected the ethical issues attached with restricting users with non-free software. To them, it's not a matter of freedom. Just like the people who use Windows, blissfully unaware that they could be doing better. "Open Source" advocates are no more for the cause of Free Software than Microsoft itself. They, like Microsoft, sometimes release Free Software. They, like Microsoft, seem to believe that Free Software and business can't work together. They, like Microsoft, do NOTHING to further freedom for the sake of freedom.

I already hear Libervisco saying "But Open Source OSes bring users to freedom." It's the "adoption" arguement which I've always found to be faulty. There are those who believe that the more people adopting GNU/Linux, the more potential people there are who will come to value freedom. On the surface, this makes sense, it's playing the odds, essentially. However, this view fails to take in to account "the other side". For every person now using GNU/Linux that MIGHT come to Freedom, you've got another person vehemently arguing how "Linux shouldn't be political". GNU/Linux adoption, at the very least, merely adds numbers to both sides of a "war" that's existed since 1991.

Admittedly, I'm a rather black-and-white thinker. I couldn't really grasp WHY encouraging Free Software use on Vista helped... How you could care about freedom and STILL use a non-free OS baffled me. But the more I think on it, that's the BEST way to advocate Free Software. When you make it a "Linux" thing, people sometimes become resistant. Having worked in the "enterprise sector" I found that change is slow. Often, change is scourned, simply because it is change. But even in people's homes, change is frowned upon, except by a small core of people... The people who have already made a change for freedom.

For years I've been advocating people switch to GNU/Linux by explaining how they're being restricted and the benefits of Freedom. Some have switched, some haven't. Those that HAVE switched all gained an appreciation for freedom. However, I'm now feeling as if I could be doing more to spread Freedom - by focusing on Windows users and Mac users. Spread freedom has ALWAYS been what I've advocated, not "adopt Linux".

There are signs that I'm not the only one. Joshua Gay, the campaign director of the Free Software Foundation discussed this in the FSF Bulletin while introducing Libre Planet. By quoting the Ithaca Free Software Association's "How to spread Free Software" he covered this idea - a way to more effectively spread the ideas of Freedom which are central to the "adopt GNU/Linux and they'll learn about Freedom" concepts. Exposure to Freedom will lead to Freedom.

This is a call to Free Software advocates. Stop advocating GNU/Linux for a moment. Take a deep breath, and think about what it is that you value about your freedom. Think of the things you're able to do with Free Software. Think of the peace of mind the added privacy and control gives you. Now think of ways to help give that message to someone around you without advocating they try GNU/Linux. Is that goal viable?

Why haven't you started?

Last week I blogged about my failed attempts to build two Intel systems to take advantage of the libre 3D drivers that Intel released.

I closed last time with the new RAM on backorder from NewEgg, 2 dried motherboards on a shipment back to NewEgg and 16 GB of incompatible RAM also trekking across the country to NewEgg's RMA department.

Shortly after blogging about this the RAM came back in stock. And when I say shortly, I mean in a matter of minutes. That was great... Except that NewEgg didn't seem to have information about tracking.

Come Tuesday morning at about 10 am I got a confirmation letter that my package had been shipped... By 11 am I had the package in my hands. While I am not complaining about NewEgg's shipping, or even UPS, the total lack of information is inconsiderate. I buy packages from companies that don't provide shipping info, and I'm cool with that. But when you provide a service, I expect it to be half effecient. Four days without notification of a shipment is too long when packages can be shipped in half a day.

Anyway, I now have 8GB of RAM sitting on my desk. A long week drags on when I realize that I will need more thermal paste for the CPU coolers. Unmounting them a few times, then tucking the processors back into storage means the paste goes bad. That's fine, because paste is cheap, and people often complain about stock paste doing it's job poorly.

So I took this moment to buy a tube of Arctic Silver ceramique paste and a green (sound activated) cold cathode from NewEgg which was boxed and shipped within three hours. Score one for NewEgg again!

On Monday, when the package was scheduled to be delivered, I'm anxiously tracking the package and I notice that UPS seems not to be able to find my apartment. Odd, I think, since I've never had problems before. My address was correct, confirmed by Ashley and Nell at NewEgg as well as someone at UPS who (through no fault of his own) wasn't very clear because of crappy phones on UPS's side.

NewEgg is a restricted shipper, so it seems, and issues with package delivery require re-authorization in order to be re-delivered. This is a stupid policy, I think, but Nell at NewEgg took the time to make it right and on Tuesday evening after work my package was there.

To make things even MORE annoying, the RMA's are delivered on NewEgg's dock by this time. UPS confirmed delivery of BOTH sets (sent a day apart, and spanning a weekend) but NewEgg hadn't begun processing them. I began getting notices that they were being processed when I get a new one. The Intel board is out of stock and they don't know when it's coming back. They graciously waived the restocking fee and refunded me the full purchase price of the board...

Twice...

GREAT! What about shipping the damn things to me? Or shipping them both BACK? As of that moment, I almost kicked the wall. I had become so infuriated with this whole processes. After nearly three weeks, I've still got 0 of 2 systems functional and I've lost money shipping boards that, as of now, I can use as much as if I hadn't bought anything.

Because I'm so sick of waiting, I just bought two new boards from NewEgg. After discussions with Perry about his experiences with Intel, I decided I'd use an MSI board since I've had a nearly decent experience with them before.

So I submitted my order, and in the process of the submission, the product was pulled from NewEgg's site! Wow... Can it GET any worse?

So... Round three.

I've since ordered two of these from Gigabyte. I've not personally used a Gigabyte board but from the people that have I hear you love them or hate them. Either they cause major issues or work flawlessly.

I've heard the same thing about Chaintech, and my experience with them has been that they're great, so I decided to take a chance on it. Hopefully, now, I'll be able to get my system going. :)

And maybe get NewEgg to make up for my loss on shipping the boards around.

Today I need to vent, nothing more. But I hope in my venting it helps someone.

In April I built the first powerhouse computer I've ever owned. Until then, I've been building on a budget - because of our move to D.C. my wife and I have been able to do things that require money we've never been able to, like spend it. Mine, naturally, went into computing.

So I built a Tyan S2927 system with two AMD Socket F Opterons 2212's. I was moving from 512 MB to 2GB, so I didn't get more in hopes that I could max the board out in a year cheaper. I threw in an nVidia GeForce 7600 GS (512 MB) to help develop and/or debug Nouveau. In the hopes that Hewlett-Packard released LightScribe specs for Free Software developers, I got a Samsung DVD burner that was LightScribe capable.

Anyway... Several months after building the system, I was pleased, but actually slightly regretting the purchase. I had this powerhouse that I barely used. While running two KVM guests and doing my "normal" stuff I still didn't push this system to it's limits, which was the point, but it was still horridly under utilized for me.

Meanwhile, at work, I'm pounding out PHP on a Pentium 4 with 512 MB and a 32MB nVidia card. The mouse jerks, and windows pop open grinding this aging beast to a halt.

The time had come to buy a new work computer, which was quickly spec-ed out by me and approved. During this build, I kept regretting my home purchase more and more... For under $800 I could build a Core 2 Duo system (with virtualization support), double the memory and... this is HUGE... get working 3D drivers that were Free Software!

So the idea of a swap occured to me, which I floated to my company who took it. Here, I could provide them a slightly used but well maintained server-grade system and all they had to do was buy me a new Intel based desktop. My company, luckily, is Free Software friendly and was actually happy to have me swapping this out AND getting what I want. it also saved them $600 over buying new parts. :)

So began my double Intel build - the second Intel build I've done, and the first I'd see through to completion. The previous ended when the motherboard, memory and processors were ALL found to be incompatible (due to a mobo maker's error and/or unethical spec listing).

In one large order we got a spare backup server, a spare virtual server node, my replacement home system and my new office system. In a few days, the UPS driver was leaving them in the middle of the hallway downstairs - but this is nothing new.

So, I gleefully bring my system in the next day and begin the swap out. Many parts are identical, mostly by design. The Core 2 Duo (E6600) processor dropped happily into the Intel DG965SS motherboard. The included heatsink (Intel does this? AMD decided not to on the Socket F processors) looks neat, and is a snap to install (no pun intended).

Unfortunately, the fan power cable got caught in the fan the first few times, causing the board to power down. I seated and reseated the board and ensured that it wasn't grounded and still the thing wouldn't stop powering down. Eventually, it just stopped spinning up, though the power light came on. :)

I figured the board was fried, so I packaged it up and decided to wait until the morning when I could test the "copy" at work.

The next morning I unpacked the virgin DG965SS board, a fresh Core 2 Duo processor, 4 more gigs of that g.Skill RAM and a fresh Silverstone power supply, mounted everything and powered it on... Once again, the fans spun and then died. It's not two fried boards, something incompatible here.

I removed the memory this time and the fans spun up and stayed there. Then, the system let out three wonderful screeches - diagnostic codes! The board is ALIVE!

I replaced the memory with some DDR2 ECC sticks that i knew worked and the board chirped yet another diagnostic code. Bad RAM. :)

So I scouer NewEgg, already feeling dimwitted for buying the wrong RAM and I find some Kingston RAM that people claim worked well with their G965 based boards - the timings were right... This was my RAM!

I then RMAed the dead board and returned the memory (at a loss due to restocking fees) and ordered a new set of 8 GB.

Today, the new memory arrived. Having not had a new work system OR a usable home system (I used my wife's rig) of my own, I was quite excited for this arrival. I connected the board and PSU and RAM and whatnot and inserted the new RAM... Spin up - die.

Spin up - die.

Die.

So... My week hasn't been to grand. :) I'm sitting here with three half assembled systems, boxes everywhere and a new set of RAM (KVR800D2N5K2/2G) on backorder with NewEgg.

It almost makes me curse the computer gods... But oh well... For now, this is the price for Freedom. :)

Right now "Open Source" is in a bit of a jam. Why? For years projects/companies have been using the term "Open Source" to describe closed products.

It's a situation Free Software advocates understand dearly - for years we've been trying to explain how the term "Open Source" is confusing when it's goal is to describe the exact same freedoms Open Source supposedly heralded as a business's dream.

"Open Source" is no longer a method to introduce Freedom to business, it's a buzzword to mean "Shareware"... Projects that doesn't view it that way have a fair share of Free Software developers anyway.

I'd argue that true "Open Source" developers should re-adopt the term Free Software - rather than explaining why you're REALLY Open Source, you can explain why it's Free as in Freedom and how that's not bad to business. :)

Anyway, that's not the point of this entry, it's just the train that led to my complaint of the day.

While checking Linux Today over the past several months I've noticed a growing trend. Firstly, they're reporting more anti-freedom opinions that ever before (oddly, there's more ads for Microsoft too...) and increasingly, authors of articles there are not open to receive comments and feedback on what they write.

Check it out yourself... Glance over Linux Today (or any news site, for that matter) and check out the first 5 articles that interest you a bit. Read the articles, and then try to find the e-mail address of the author.

Bloggers tend to have their addresses out more than "News sites", but many bloggers even don't have their addresses easily accessible.

I'm guilty of this, and I didn't even know it.

Bloggers, this is a call to make yourself accessible! You've got opinions you feel important enough to share, you should be open to feedback on them!

News Sites: I don't read your articles if I can't contact your authors. That means that I don't click your ads (as a webmaster, I DO click ads for sites I like - bandwidth, servers and staff aren't free!). That means the VALUE of your site decreases just that much.

The internet is open, like it or not. It's a multi-way platform, like it or not. Don't take without giving, don't speak without listening.

I'd like to, now, thank two people (and give props to their sites) for being not only open, but friendly as well.

Scott Ruecker of LXer.com and Michael Larabel of Phoronix.com. Thanks guys, you set great examples!

My e-mail address is kevin@foreverdean.info - I'll find somewhere to put it to make it easier to find. :D

A cracker (who is being mistakenly referred to as a "hacker" by the media) using the name "Gabriel" claims to have gotten a pre-publication version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Claiming that he is honoring the words of the Pope, and preventing youth from turning to Neo Paganism, he hopes the spoilers will make the book less enjoyable.

He then plugs an anti-Islam site.

I like spoilers. They help me build up anticipation. Spoliers don't tell a story like the author's writing can, and it doens't spoil the plot, to me.

I don't care about Harry Potter any more than any other mundane book or movie I've watched (Robert Jordan's works are not mundane).

Gabriel will, however, go down in my book as one thing - an asshole.

Live and let live.

I came across an article today that caught my interest. It can be found here [OSweekly.com].

Below is my reply, bolded text is quotation from his article.

Matt,

Firstly, thank you for the mainly neutral article on Libre vs restricted software. Granted, I don't expect anyone to be fully neutral but I do expect that legitimate, professional writers address topics in such a way.

I've very firmly in the "purist" category. Many years ago, while running Windows XP I got fed up with constant issues and sought out an alternative. I ended up installing an old (and admittedly pretty bad version) of Debian, perhaps Potato. It didn't suit me, and I ended up installing a few other things. I managed to settle for a while on SimplyMepis, a distro known for blending Libre and restricted software for "ease of use" and "hardware compatibility."

However, I began noticing many of the same issues as I did on Windows, crashes, lockups and glitches. Granted, it was much better than XP, but still annoying enough to hamper my productivity.

As I learned more and more about my system, I came to understand that while GNU/Linux was technically superior, it wasn't something inherent in GNU/Linux itself, but stemmed directly from the freedom protected by the GPL and other Free Software licenses.

I now run 100% software libre on my own computers, including my system at work. I wasn't born some software nut, or raised in a nut case family distrustful of everything, I learned to value my freedom, and see it all as an ethical issue, from HAVING it.

Knowing a bit of my progression, I'd like to address a few things from your article.

"I suspect that many purists are concerned about possible contamination of open source as a whole and fear the potential for quality being lost in the shuffle. In short, who knows what their deal is?"

At this point, it's no longer about technical superiority for me. That's why I moved to GNU/Linux. However, I've come to believe that "Freedom" is the greatest for of superiority. If an operating system supports one hard drive, one video card, one processor and respects my freedom, it's superior to a system that supports ten thousand devices and trods on my freedom. My personal fear when discussing "Closed source" software is that people will adopt GNU/Linux without understanding WHY it's better, and because of this, they won't learn to value their freedom. As more restricted software is "standard" on GNU/Linux, quality will gradully decline - ultimately GNU/Linux will be just as buggy as Windows and just as restrictive. Everyone looses in this case.

"To those who still choose to harbor harsh feelings toward proprietary software, I think I would point out that like it or not, some distros have been and will continue to include it. Now, I’m neither downing this fact or supporting it, I’m merely pointing out that this is a fact of life and we might as well make the best of it."

I don't harbor harsh feelings towards non-free software; I think the vast majority of so-called "purists" don't either. We've come to realize that restricting users is unethical; it violates the concepts of community. Information such as art and science should be shared freely: without benefiting humanity these things are useless endeavours. Instead, our issue is with the mentality that restricting users is okay, and even more, that restricting users should be "common". If Microsoft or Adobe has a program today that is restrictively licensed and tomorrow releases it unchanged under the GPL the unacceptable actions have been removed. The code is the same, but it's now Libre!

"That and to back off when criticizing the distributions that have finally met the needs of the common user through straightforward simplicity."

I'm a bit confused by this statement, truthfully. Both because I'm unsure how you intended it, and because I know I already have strong views about what it implies.

I see nothing wrong with making an operating system simple. I'd not use a system that wasn't simple. This statement was tacked on behind another statement involving "purist" distros which makes me believe you're implying that "Imposing license restrictions on users makes things simpler, more straightforward and better."

This is where I disagree, if that is what the statement meant. Back to my previous point of GNU/Linux getting it's technical superiority as a RESULT of freedom. But to add more, I can't find a single instance where I'd feel it's beneficial to be restricted to do something with my computer.

If a wifi card doesn't have libre drivers then that card is a paperweight, it holds no more value than the materials it is composed of. The problem is that users buy hardware designed for Windows and feel irritated that it doesn't work with GNU/Linux. Having had the opposite happen, I know the irritation. I've been building systems for GNU/Linux for years, and I've got no complaints. On the flipside, I don't expect Windows to install flawlessly on that same system (for the record, i've tried and I have yet to have a sound card work without "tweaking").

"Another factor that is helping in noticing the rise in proprietary software inclusion with specific distributions is the complete lack of open source alternatives."

I disagree here. The issue isn't so much that this software is being added, but that users believe it's needed. The example you proceeded to give was a movie editing application.

While many people will immediatly react to this sentiment, I'll say it. If you can't do it with libre tools the thing shouldn't be done. I have told that to a screenwriter and CG artist who depends on many restrictive tools. I have told that to employeers right before quitting jobs.

"I believe another simple fact of life is that people are going to have to get used to the issue of Windows migrants bringing their need for specific applications along with them. This would certainly explain the explosion is WINE popularity for sure."

I believe it's sad if this is where anyone's settled. I don't feel antipathy to those that use restrictive software, I feel sadness, actually. Nobody likes feeling powerless. America is dependant on "foreign oil" and it makes us feel restricted. We're all on a budget, we have a limited suppy of money, and it rankles everyone at some point. Depending on ONE tools so much that it paralyzes you, and prevents you from making certain decisions is sad and a bit scary to me. Imagine the state of the world if mechanics couldn't choose to use one brand of tools over another, or if doctors were required to use one brand of drug irrespective of it's effectiveness or the side-effects. The same thing applies to software, perhaps even more so considering that alternatives can be created with freely shared knowledge and time.

"So, if we are so quick to allow proprietary applications in WINE, why the resistance and even downright resentment with proprietary applications then? Simple, the rules of the GPL disallow it. This may not seem fair, but regardless, this is simply how it is."

Many people use Wine to run games or restrictive Windows applications. I once asked "If GNU/Linux is a libre OS, why make a tool to run restrictive applications?" I asked the same thing about the existance of the ReactOS project (http://www.reactos.org/).

Wine and ReactOS are essentially bug fixes to the problem of restrictions. In a world with several mature, Libre operating systems, it is understandable to try to introduce people to freedom gradually. Let people try GNU/Linux and bring over that application or two they are still dependant on: in time they'll learn to do without it.

The problem Wine and ReactOS case is that people look at it from the other side: even GNU/Linux has non-free things, so it's not so bad. As more and more people come to GNU/Linux because they CAN bring their non-free apllications the messages, ideas and concepts of Freedom are dilluted more and more.

I firmly believe that GNU/Linux does only ONE thing better than Windows, and that is be a Libre OS. When you sacrifice that, all is lost, because now you have a restrictive, buggy system and it doesn't support "all" of the hardware around.

Thanks for taking the time to read that. :)

-Kevin Dean

I found an old document today; a tattered piece of paper with some fanciful caligraphy on it.

This paper spoke of lunacy; of freedoms and rights. Of protections, and a government the devises it's power from the People, rather than making demands of the people.

It is a thing of legends and dreams, a true utopia of ethical government.

I like this part, specifically: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The document is the Constitution; it is still a valid document and it is a ruling document.

I have the right to worship Jesus, or Allah, or nobody. I have the right to march for immigration reform, or to ban abortion or to support gay marriage. I have the right to tell my Senators that I dislike smoking bans and I want them removed. I can tell my Representative to allow Trans-fats! I can say George Bush is a moron! I can say that the answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is 42! I can say "there is no spoon!"

I can also fire off random numerical strings, like 4564764168735435435, 1111111111111111111110010101110. I can wear them on T-Shirts, or Bumperstickers or have them tattooed to my face if I like.

And in the USA, I can post 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0 to my blog. I need not say what it does, and in fact I will not. But I stand firmly that posting this string is protected by my Constitutional Rights as a natural born citizen of the United States of America.

I encourage ALL Americans to spread this number freely. Because that's what it's always about with me, Freedom.

Think of it as "Free Speech" not "Free Beer". And once more, I love Free Speech!

Today Linux.com ran a letter written by Eric S. Raymond.

He changed distros, from Fedora to Ubuntu.

The story is found at http://enterprise.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/02/21/1340237, because I don't even want to link it.

First off, I know who Eric S. Raymond is. I've read enough of his writing to know I dislike him. Respect him, yes, like him, certainly not. Just because I know of him doesn't mean I care. I don't know or care what distro Linus uses (except, now, in some odd sort of way that stems from my love of trivia).

It takes one of two things to actually write the media to announce you've changed distros. It takes a sense of arrogance far surpassing mine, or a really small mind.

My first responce was "Wow, this guy is arrogant." Then I read the article.

One reason he sited for leaving was RPM's inability to handle an upgrade. Holy shit, a 13 year Fedora user saying what ALL of the Debian community has been saying for years?

Because it took him 13 years to realize that, I am content to say that the article was written by the size of his brain, not arrogance.

*** NOTE: Eric S. Raymond is a very vocal member of the Open Source Movement, he's very strongly rejected the ideals of Freedom which I view to be central to my involvement and use of GNU/Linux and computing in general. It is his views, and the way in which he addresses them, that I have issue with. The man has not yet done anything to me directly for me to not like him... Except writing the media to announce a distro change. ***

It's been a long time since I've actually seen a Gnome vs. KDE battle end with more than "Use what works best for you". It seems that not discussing the Gnome vs. KDE thing is the "political correctness".

But Linus, being his typical loud-mouthed, arrogant and attention grabbing (these things are true, and are not bad in and of themselves. If you dispute this Linus, e-mail me, everyone else can shut up. :) ) self has fired off patches to Gnome in hopes of improving things as he sees fit. The debate, it seems, has stirred up again and is visible on Linux.com and Linuxnews.com.

My rant today will be about why both KDE and Gnome suck. I'm not even going to say "E17 is better than both of them" or "Afterstep does this." I'm simply going to comment on why both KDE and Gnome are not perfect solutions, and why you should be critical of everyone's opinions, and form your own before deciding.

For the sake of this article, I will use DEFAULT settings for KDE 3.5 (Nothing major has changed in any of those versions) and Gnome 2.14. It should be safe to apply these opinions to anything in the same version family.

Let's begin this with the biggest part of the desktop environment, the File Manager. It's a part of the desktop that a LOT of people ignore, but it's something that will play a deciding factor.

Nautilus vs. Konqueror

By default, Gnome's Nautilus File Manager uses what some people call a "spatial view". Clicking a folder opens another window while keeping the old one open. This behaviour is perhaps the most complained about feature I've ever come across while discussing the matter. For the record, there are two ways around that. Double middle-click will open the selected folder in Gnome's "Browser" mode. By selecting Edit -> Preferences -> Behaviour and choosing "Always open in Browser Window".

Konqueror, on the other hand, uses this "browser" mode by default. In fact, the File Manager IS the browser, much in the same way that Windows Explorer is (and Internet Explorer before that). In this case, however, it doesn't make the browser and the file manager suck. :D

On the matter of network transparency, Nautilus might be a bit more intuitive, but it is quite a bit less powerful. For instance, from a default Nautilus install, the option to view Samba shares is immediate, nothing needing configuration. The fact that icons are visible from the beginning make it quite a bit more intuitive than Konqueror.

Once configured properly, however, Konqueror excels, making the transition from local file to network file almost seamless. Nautilus is unable to CHMOD files via FTP, for instance, while Konqueror does it with the same look and feel that one would be used to while editing local files.

The final differentiating feature of K vs. N is the file movement dialogues. Most KDE users are familiar with his option, which appears by dragging and dropping a file from one location to another. Once the mouse button is released, the user has the option to cp, mv or ln the files. Nautilus merely moves the file.

At first, this annoyed me quite a bit. However, as I began using the GUI for more and more things (Yes, that's right, I'm a Linux user who had to LEARN the GUI... CLI is quite intuitive and works the same on ALL DE's) I found that this was less of an annoyance and more of a time saver.

Having evaluated MY personal use, I tend not to move files at all. I download everything to the Desktop, use it and then remove it. If it's a wallpaper, I move it to /home/kevin/content/theme/wallpaper. If it's a source tarball I'll FTP it to my server and delete it, or compile it and remove the sources. Everything OFF of my desktop is rather immutable. When I alter something in one of those folders, it's usually for backup, not use. I like COPYING files I'm backing up.

With those things in mind, both Konqueror and Nautilus are etrememly stable. Both will copy files and show files without many issues. Because of the few things they do differently, and my personal use, I declare Konqueror the winner in the file manager battle.

One other thing that nautilus and Konqueror both do are draw the desktop itself. They control the wallpaper on the screen, the icon placement all that jazz. As of Gnome 2.8, Gnome was UNABLE to set different wallpapers for different desktops. This is something I rather like about KDE. I have a dual monitor setup. The idea that I must have a repeatable wallpaper to be consistant is bad. The idea that my wallpaper must be unbroken in bad. Until my desktop environment can eliminate the physical space between the edges of the two monitors, they should make the break as smooth as possible. With KDE, and the different wallpaper, this is handled by treating the monitors differently, which is much less jarring to me that having a wallpaper broken mid-way.

Kwin vs. Metacity

An often overlooked part of a desktop environment is the window manager. Of course, anyone familiar with Compiz or Beryl will instantly refute this, in the 2D world, nobody really cares. :D

There is only one real difference between Kwin and Metacity in terms of usability in my mind. Kwin has "Advanced Window Placement" options. One thing that is CRITICAL for me is that my windows open where I want them. Kwin allows me to place each window, resize each window, pick a desktop and have these options saved and applied automatically every time.

I always open Kopete on desktop 6. I like that when I open Kopete while VIEWING iceweasel I don't have to move it over to 6 from 1, which I'm currently on.

Metacity does not provide many placement options, and only one in terms of which virtual desktop applications should go to. For this, it's quite easy for me to declare a winner for WM between "Gnome" and "KDE". Kwin for the win.

Kicker vs Gnome Panel

Kicker and Gnome Panel are the little applications that run at the bottom of the screen (Gnome Panel is at the top AND bottom) and are a container for your application launchers, contains your taskbar and your system tray.

Let me begin by pointing out something that has ALWAYS irked me. Most window managers put their window controls in the top-right corner of the window. To close a window, top-right. Most DE panels put the useful controls at the bottom. To open an application and then co close it, you have to move your mouse across a full screen (or two, in some cases) to close it. Keyboard shortcuts can eliminate this, but putting the controls at the TOP of the screen can save our little mouse a lot of "walking".

For this reason, I have to give some points to Gnome Panel. On a default install, the program menu is up top, just like Metacity's window controls.

Here's where it gets clunky though... Gnome splits it up! Damn you!

Kicker defaults to the bottom. However, it's a single panel, which can be dragged to the top in about as much time as it takes to drag the mouse up top to close the window.

Kicker has some nice animations and informational bubbles associated with many different things. While this isn't exactly a plus for usability, it is nice. Eye candy is ALWAYS good. :D

As a sub-set of Kicker/Gnome-Panel, I'll address the pager applet for both. Gnome's desktop switcher is VERY bland, in my opinion. Bland being that it is just a set of boring boxes, where KDE's pager pulls the icon of the application and places it in the little desktop. This is useful when you accidentally drag a window off the desktop, or just want an overview of what you've got.

However, I must add in now that I think both KDE and Gnome kicker/panel are lacking in comparison to the general setup of E17's bars. Anyone who's used a dual monitor setup for over a week will appreciate it. However, KDE and Gnome both tend to treat the monitors as extensions of each other. For instance, set Gnome or KDE to have 6 desktops on a single monitor system. Then, add a second monitor. It shows (and treats) each desktop as a double-wide monitor. This is a behaviour that I absolutely hate.

E17 allows each monitor to have virtual desktops. I can keep my browser open on one page, move the mouse over to the other monitor switch to my system monitor, pop over to my mail client and then switch back to the terminals that's open, all without moving the broser off the other monitor. I can still drag applications across to the other monitors, of course.

The final difference between KDE and Gnome I've noticed is contant and nagging; the taskbar. Gnome-panel tends to handle KDE application events poorly, where Kicker handles Gnome events pretty well. It is quite annoying to have a never ending Kopete bar flashing away at me.

GTK vs QT

One thing that is important to touch on briefly is the toolkits used to build the applications. The use of certain widgets and toolkits give applications a consistant look and feel. This is why Gaim is seen as a "Gnome app" even though it's NOT released by the Gnome Project.

Both, when used exclusivly, are pretty good. I don't really know much about the underlying technical aspects, but between GTK and QT, I prefer the GPL of QT better than the LGPL of GTK.

It's when used in comparison to each other, or with each other, that they display their relative weaknesses, which I think epitomize KDE and Gnome.

Gnome seems to accept themes MUCH more easily than KDE. A KDE theme touches many, but not all applications, even applications distributed as part of KDE. Kopete for instance, accepts PARTS of the KDE theme, but other parts of it are ignored.

GTK themes are applied more smoothly, affecting all GTK applications evenly.

I'll end my review today with "KDE" vs. "Gnome" without getting into the specific applications that also define my opinions. However, I think it important to note that I use applications from BOTH KDE and Gnome every day. One problem I notice that affects both KDE and Gnome is their ability to work together.

Running Kopete in Gnome looks out of place. Just as running Iceweasel in KDE looks like the proverbial sore thumb.

This is something many people have dismissed as inevitable, or insignifigant, but it's something that has always reseted on my list of flaws with the Free Software pool. I like my applications to all look consistant. I don't care if that's KDE style QT consistant or GTK style Gnome consistant.

The Portland project attempts to address how underlying things work between desktop environments, but it won't touch how they LOOK. There have been attempts in the past to do something with it. the gtk2-qt engine, for example, will do it's best to render GTK apps like QT ones, making Gnome programs look more like KDE ones. For the most part, it does a good job, except in one very noticable case... Mozilla stuff. This is kind of big for me, but given the advantage of a uniform look, I'll cope.

There is, however, nothing like this to convert QT applications to GTK. If there is, it remains elusive. The best option I've seen on the Gnome side is MetaTheme, which died on version 0.0.6, and that was several years ago. What this did was caught QT, GTK and Java UI widgets and rewrote them in a common theme. It could use on of several pre-made themes or import MSSTYLE themes, making everything look the same. I really like the idea there, but the lack of momentum meant the application had little flexibility.

Since neither KDE or Gnome can theme applications from the "other side", I consider BOTH of them flawed. This late in the game, KDE should have developed a way to integrate non-KDE applications better. And if Gnome is focused on on "sane defaults", there should really be some method of enforcing these defaults. After all, a User Interface that isn't consistant is really bad.

Both KDE and Gnome suck. End of the debate (not really, but I hope readers realize that they BOTH need work. :)

If anyone had a duty to protect Julie Doe, it was her parents, not MySpace.

This quote comes from a Texas judge in a ruling in favour of MySpace yesterday. In this case, several families of sexual assault victims sued MySpace, claiming they have a duty to "protect the children".

Firstly, to the victims of sexual abuse, you're not alone. I'm a survivor of sexual abuse too. Secondly to the families of sexual abuse victims, you have our support.

Thirdly, about damn time! There's an age old adage that says "Don't talk to strangers". I remember in school seeing videos of gruff old men pulling up in beat up cars offering little kids candy.

Are those videos still around? Despite the horrible (and dangerously wrong!) assumptions made about sex offenders, they did instill a sense of caution in children. You don't talk to strangers! Don't give your address to them. Don't give your phone number to them. Don't get in their car!

The same thing applies in the modern world, just, perhaps a bit differently. There ARE ways to form relationships with people online. I do, and have done it, seveal times. In fact, the relative safety of the internet makes such relationships MORE productive. Telling the truth is much easier when there's a "Quit" button. :)

That said, kids are dumb. Kids think they know what they're doing, what they're about, how the world works. It is a parent's place to teach their children the skills needed to make those distinctions, and to ensure that they don't have to use those skills until they're honed enough to be useful when needed.

The parents who allow their kids on MySpace without talking, teaching and listening are just as stupid as the parents who allow their kids to run off with unknown "friends". Parents should have a desire to know what happens in their kid's lives, those that don't fail at parenting.

And that's a bigger issue that MySpace will ever be.

Jason kindly pointed me to a letter written by Steve Jobs. Jason's e-mail was titled "Open DRM", which piqued my curiosity like "Boiling Ice" would have. :)

The article can be found here for those who are interested.

Text in italics are quotes from the letter.

With the stunning global success of Apple’s iPod music player and iTunes online music store, some have called for Apple to “open” the digital rights management (DRM) system that Apple uses to protect its music against theft, so that music purchased from iTunes can be played on digital devices purchased from other companies, and protected music purchased from other online music stores can play on iPods.

Steve, this isn't something that is new, or even off the wall. A product that can NOT do this is not protected, it is mangled and defective. Consider, for a moment, how the public would have reacted to the popular iPod had it been accompanied with a brochure explaining what you can and can not do with songs from iTunes. Imagine this brochure was, by law, required to be visible and accessible to the public BEFORE they made such purposes.

To begin, it is useful to remember that all iPods play music that is free of any DRM and encoded in “open” licensable formats such as MP3 and AAC.

Firstly, I am a member of the Free Software community. They say a write must always remember his audience. Giving the source, or specifications to a bit of software is not enough. You must give the FREEDOM to use that source as well.

Secondly, MP3 is not even "open" format. It is restricted just as much as the Apple or Zune DRM schemes. If it's as open as you say, please point me in the direction to a source download of an MP3 encoder that is legal inside the US. There is not one. Like I said, source code and being "open" is not enough. You must also give the Freedom to use it. Patent law in the US prohibits anyone from using the MP3 format without a "Thompson" license, just as your DRM schemes prohibit iTunes songs elsewhere. The same goes for the AAC format, which is merely a container for another patented and RESTRICTED audio format.

If you are sincere about "openness", why not mention Ogg or FLAC, both are availible as Free software, and in addition to liberty, is also free (gratis)?

Music on CDs can be easily imported into the freely-downloadable iTunes jukebox software which runs on both Macs and Windows PCs [..]

I point everyone to The Free Software Definition when they mention that software is free. Those are the binary executables, for Window and Mac, but where is the source code? "Access to the source is a precondition". iTunes is not Free, it's cheap. Furthermore, Apple sells a hardware device. A device which, incidentally, is USB Mass Storage compliant. This means that it will function on ANY computer that can read a standard USB device, such as a hard drive or the iPod. This means GNU/Linux, FreeBSD (from which OS X is derived), GNU/Solaris, BeOS (et cetera) have little problem connecting to, and displaying content on this device. Where are the "freely" available downloads for these operating systems? Where, even, are Apple's links to software for these platforms that can provide the functionality that you deprived the iPod owners of?

encoded into the open AAC or MP3 formats without any DRM. This music can be played on iPods or any other music players that play these open formats.

It is not mentioned here that this is illegal in some nations (such as the United States, which Apple is headquartered in) because of laws lobbied for by the RIAA and MPAA, and passed without consent of the democratic public. The same companies, in fact, that "requested" DRM be incorporated into the iPod in the first place, as Mr. Jobs later states himself.

The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices.

Can you honestly speak that sentence without feeling chilled to the core? I can not read it without. "Secrets" do not belong in software. Doing so deprives users the right to retain control of their OWN PROPERTY. If Ford or GM put in place systems designed to make it impossible for drivers to see, for instance, the type of coolant in their radiator, they would be rejected by the automotive community faster than they could produce such cars. The ONLY reason such things haven't happened YET in the software world is because the general populace is being lied to and kept innocent of the "secret". I paraphrase a top Disney executive who said "If customers realize there is DRM, we've already lost.". Please be mindful of the Pixar/Apple/Disney connection...

Secondly, who determines weither a device is authorized? If your answer was anything other than "The owner of that device" you're dead wrong. If I buy a CD, it better damn well play in a CD player I build myself, else it's defective. I ask you, can iTunes do that when DRM is in