Join my SOPA protest on Reddit

This is a very short post. Unless you live under a rock the decision on SOPA is being made today. I have a little protest at Reddit. Feel free to join or tell me I am nuts… http://www.reddit.com/r/SOPA/comments/nd4p1/my_promise_if_sopa_passes/

how acceptance of proprietary software prevents Free Software innovation

There has been this argument in the community for a while that using some non-free software to further the Free Software advocacy might be a useful thing. As an example say you have a graphics card that there is no Free Software driver for. Then using a proprietary driver and therefore being able to use a mostly free software OS becomes justifiable. Because at least in this way we are increasing the amount of people who can use free software and the amount of people supporting it. I have for the most part been onboard with this argument or at least sympathetic to it. However there has been an interesting turn of events recently that has slightly changed my mind.

 

I recently installed Trisquel GNU/Linux on my desktop. I have an Nvidia card on there and I was thinking “oh great I am going to have to replace my graphics card and find one that’s supported”. Up until this point I had been using Ubuntu with the proprietary Nvidia driver installed. However within about 30 minutes of use or so I realized something. That actually the rendering seemed smoother then what the proprietary driver had been offering me. With the non-free driver video had been choppy at times. Sometimes the screen would get a bit flickery on me. With the free driver I was using video playback was smooth and not choppy at all and my screen has never flickered once. Needless to say I was a bit confused I had always had bad luck with the nv driver and my cards.

 

A little poking around revealed I wasn’t using nv it was nouveau. Looking at their website I found that they listed my card as having full 2D rendering support under the version I was using and limited 3D support. Somehow when I wasn’t looking the nouveau project sprang up and matured right under my nose. I instantly went to my laptop and uninstalled the proprietary Nvidia driver on there and switched to nouveau as well. And again amazing 2D support resulted. Videos suddenly played full screen that use to drag my CPU down and cause the fan to spin up. Actually some of these videos would barely play full screen under battery before. With the Free driver they played no problem and with much less memory usage. I have noticed my battery life has improved since making the switch as well.

 

So what does this mean? While we have all been using the proprietary drivers we have been ignoring the need to replace them with free drivers. We have become complacent. And of course our developers who are replacing them are ending up doing a better job then the people who have the specs on the card. So I am saying we need to try and replace these non-free parts with free ones. If there is no replacement yet find the projects that are working on them and pledge your support.

 

I think that we have accepted non-free software onto our systems has hidden some of the gaps in our technology. We don’t even notice that there is a problem we just think we are using Free Software when we are actually using tons of proprietary. When you remove the proprietary the holes become apparent. The thing is there are people trying to fix those holes but no one knows about it because they are using the non-free drivers. So what I think I am trying to say is not to necessarily not use any proprietary software but always try to be replacing with free options. And when a project is trying to fix a hole we should get behind them and support them not ignore them until the job is done. It’s like if we were trying to feed the homeless. What if everyone said well I will only contribute once the soup kitchens are built and they have all the food ready. Well then we would never feed them would we.

 

 

encrypt the web HTTPS everywhere is awesome

As Free Software activists privacy is always a concern. There are all kinds of attacks that can be employed no matter what OS you use. for instance there are man in the middle attacks which watch the traffic that is running through a connection. Your ISP could be trying to watch your traffic. Of course nefarious individuals might be trying to snoop on your browsing as well. These are all things which can compromise your privacy. That is where the browser plug-in HTTPS everywhere steps in.

HTTPS everywhere is a browser plug-in that checks to see if the website your trying to browse to has an HTTPS version and redirects you there. believe it or not most websites have an HTTPS version available. And there was a recent facebook issue where they recommended using HTTPS to prevent snooping and if you had been using the plug-in you would have been protected to begin with. So what is HTTPS and how does it protect you?

From wikipedia
“Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a combination of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol with the SSL/TLS protocol to provide encrypted communication and secure identification of a network web server. HTTPS connections are often used for payment transactions on the World Wide Web and for sensitive transactions in corporate information systems. HTTPS should not be confused with Secure HTTP (S-HTTP) specified in RFC 2660.”

What this means is that you are establishing an encrypted connection between you(client) and the website(server). This is a connection that even your ISP can’t snoop on or the government (well as far as we know anyway). So this is a useful plug-in even if you are say using the tor router to hide your IP address because there is still the possibility that your ISP the government or someone between you and the tor entrance node could be snooping.

To install go to the Electronic Freedom Foundation’s HTTPS everywhere page. click on the big encrypt the web: Install HTTPS Everywhere.

then a little bar will drop down click allow to except the install and then it will install like any other firefox plug-in.

Some drawbacks:
First I’d like mentioned not all sites have HTTPS so just watch your address bar to be sure.

second for some reason facebook doesn’t seem to like HTTPS pages as a submitted link so you will need to edit those urls that are posting to facebook.

All and all this is one of my favorite plug-ins it offers enhanced protection without bothering the user. most times the user will never even notice it’s there.