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.

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.

Hey all…

Well it’s only a week a way it’s libreplanet 2011!!! Last years even was awesome and a little tireing at times. I got sick on the last day and had to leave early but listend to the rest of the conference online. This year should be awesome. It’s always a conference where you see familiar faces and friends from years past. Here is this years events schedule.

* 9am — Breakfast and registration
* 10am — Welcome to LP2011 — Matt Lee and John Sullivan
* 10:15am — Brett Smith — The GPL Compliance Lab
* 11am — Máirín Duffy — Empowering Girl Scouts using free software
* noon — Lunch
* 1:15pm — Keynote by Richard Stallman and free software awards
* 2:15pm — FSF Campaigns Update — Matt Lee
* 2:45pm — Coffee and keysigning
* 3:15pm — Bradley Kuhn (FSF Director) — Non-profit infrastructure for free     software projects
* 4:10pm — Announcement
* 4:20pm — Free Software Foundation in 2011 — John Sullivan
* 4:50pm — Closing remarks — Matt Lee
* 5pm — End of the event
* 6pm — social events

As you can see this is a bit stripped down then what it has been in previous years. I am not exactly sure why. Maybe things have just been crazy and this is all that could be planned for. maybe experience from previous years has taught that it is best to keep it simple.

I am especially looking forward to hearing a Campaigns update, Bradley’s speech,and FSF in 2011. I don’t usually do the social events thing just because I always have to drive so far. So by that time I want to get home and find a pillow. However usually someone drags me to a social event and I hang out so maybe I will want to go. What about you are you going? what are you interested in seeing?

Edit

Upon suggestion let me mention some details of location: LibrePlanet 2011 will be a one-day conference on Saturday, March 19th 2011 at Bunker Hill Community College, in Boston, MA. If you’re coming in for the weekend, we have plans for Friday and Sunday as well, although these are informal.

For more information see the libreplanet wiki

To make a long story short it’s really hard to develop Gnash. basically the rules in the reverse engineering of Flash make it so that to work on the project you can never have used a version of Adobe flash for your own personal use to begin with. Now there are not a whole lot of computer users or developers for that matter who have never installed some version of adobe flash player so this greatly limits the number of developers that can work on this project. What is more is the project has gone broke at the moment. So in order to develop anything they need to pick up some regular funding. At the moment you can send one time donations to them through this website: Open Media Now . I have sent an email to rob saying that they should turn to a monthly donation model. I think if that happens they would get a lot more people just signing up to give like 5 dollars a month. with that amount it would take only 200 people to raise 1000$ a month. and if they went with a scheme where you could set different amounts they could raise even more. I would consider donating 10 dollars a month if it was an option. So what do you say would you donate regularly if it was an option??

Just adding a video to add some history about where Gnash came from here is a interview with rob savoy who is the lead developer:

Okay So I am sure that we all have heard saw this bomb of a video that Microsoft has unleashed on the world. Apparently when your own product is really crappy the only way you can get ahead is by making these little videos attacking non-profit opensource projects like the Openoffice community. So as a way to vent and an exercise in futility lets go point by point through this thing and talk about the video.

So the first part of the video talks about the exorbitant cost and the lack of support for the product. Now the person originally said they were on PC’s running linux and had openoffice installed. I am not sure if they mean lack of support for linux or lack of support for openoffice. But either way it’s still kind of silly. Are you trying to tell me that you can call Microsoft and ask advice about putting together a spreadsheet or a word document? I don’t think so. Really what this is saying is “well I already knew word and didn’t want to learn anything else so I just went back to word”. Microsoft’s strategy is to get people hooked when they are in primary school. When you have been using something for 10 plus years in primary school you tend to forget how long it took you to learn that original product. Ultimately instead of viewing Openoffice as a learning curve people just see it as difficult to use. When in fact it is as easy to use you just need to be willing to learn how to use it. I personally have never really used MSOffice and the few times I had I found it really tough and difficult to use. And I suspect it is probably for the same reasons I listed.

Now I don’t understand what the exorbitant cost could be. Maybe retraining or something like that. I guess this company had never heard of a LUG or a LoCo but most groups like that either have workshops or they will just help you with your PC for free. But it’s a strange argument when you consider all the companies that have switched and find that they saved tons of money.

“If an opensource freeware product breaks who’s going to fix it?”

I would ask the same question of a proprietary software package. I have in the past had huge problems with certain proprietary packages and guess what no one ever fixed it for me. I have had issues with opensource packages too and guess what? I talk to the developers, or send them an email, or file a bug report. And guess what? It gets fixed. Yeah no joke little old me with no company backing can get stuff fixed just by filing bug reports. I have heard this argument so many times by people that just know plain nothing about the community and there is so many options for getting things fixed I just think they are not use to choice. Here are your options for getting things fixed…

Opensource/Free Software options for software issues

• Write the developers
• File a bug report
• Hire an in house developer
• Hire an out of house developer
• Use another program that does the same thing (tons of these in opensource community)

V.S.

Proprietary options for software issues

• Call Tech support (they can’t help you it’s an actual code problem)
• Ask for it to be fixed = get totally shafted

So there you go good luck with that proprietary software support. Okay lets continue on with this pathetic attempt to persuade anyone.

“A hugely disproportionate 30% of our IT resources was required for a period of months

to service open source an estimated 25% of additional staff time was routinely required to install and maintain Opensource-based systems”

When I heard this it made me instantly think “Why!” your IT people are just not trained or experienced in opensource. I can get a system up in running with all software packages installed in like 30 minutes. All you need to do is burn 100 CDs or make 100 bootable flash drives and have a script written with all the packages needed and your done. In fact there are packages out there that will let you setup one system the way you need it and then just make a custom distro based off that one system. What is with all this system maintenance? Even if it was all the updates that need to be run you can just remotely get into a system from your office and run apt-get upgrade from a shell is that so hard? If I was switching to opensource in a company I would hire IT people trained in it. But no everyone just thinks because your a technician your trained in everything that has to do with computers.

For a second or two in the video there is some blah blah blah about nothing. Then we have the next fun thing to talk about. I am not going to type it all out but the video goes into this long diatribe about how Openoffice has problems with .doc files and other proprietary Microsoft file formats. I have heard this complaint before. It has problems because these are proprietary formats people. Someone had to reverse engineer this crap and it probably took forever to get it to work as well as it does. What we should really ask is “hey why did a developer have such a hard time implementing this format?”.

Microsoft for a moment didn’t give the OpenOffice community one bit of help with interoperability. And it’s obvious why. They want you to keep using their office product so they create a format that no one else can open to create vendor lock in. and then on top of it they refuse to implement anyone else’s format to keep you from being able to send a sensibly formatted document. So for instance I could open a .doc even though some formatting might be a bit off. However I could not send someone with word a .odt file. Word can’t open .odt files so I have to reformat it as a doc and then on the other end their might be formatting problems opening it up. So the interoperability problem is not in Openoffice it’s with Microsoft Word. I suggest that if you are in favor of interoperability you go with Openoffice over word any day. I suppose seeing as you think Microsoft has such good support you could ask them to implement .odt but as you can see above that will just lead you to getting shafted.

Now the rest of the video goes on and on about how people are so use to using MSoffice and that going back to it was so nice. What this should instantly say to people is that we need to get a more diverse suite of software into schools. We are creating a culture based on the consumption of one companies product. We are actually using schools to market that product to kids. Then later on in life when they have businesses and could save a buck they are blocked because of their dependence on a certain product. Also by having it in schools we are supporting anti-inoperability by supporting a company who actively tries to not cooperate and play nice with others.

Of course there will always be the spin doctors at Microsoft that are able to make people think that they emanate some sort of heavenly glow. But most techies actually know better then that. If you don’t believe me just notice that in the you tube video they had to turn comments off. Also notice that the video has 236 likes and 2,439 dislikes. Hmm that’s what we call backlash people because guess what opensource and Free Software people pay attention. We are not just going to stand by in idle while you just harass us and defame our community. Even if our only defense is to post nasty comments and to dislike your you tube video a million times.

New and shiny stress:

When I new device or cutting edge product comes out there is a bit of stress that goes along with it especially for everyone that wants one. Some people usually college and high school students will be worried about image if they don’t get one of these devices. On top of this add the stress of worrying if you have the money to buy one and afford the possible service fees that go along with it. Any time money comes into the picture the stakes go up.

Out of the loop stress:

Another stressful thing comes up with social networking. The second people are away from their computers they start wondering “what’s happening on facebook?, I wonder if I have an email waiting, I wonder what I should blog about”. So we now bring cell phones, tablets, and laptops with us everywhere to try and cope with this stress.

(interestingly this creates a new stress) Waiting for something to happen:

Now you have a new problem you are literally waiting for those emails, wall posts, and comments to come in. which leads to “zombie checking” where you keep browsing to the page or app only to see “nothing yet”. Some of our more paranoid friends will start think where is everyone? How come no one is emailing me or sending me an Instant message? The really sad part is nothing is happening because people are actually doing something with their life instead of zombie checking.

When shit goes wrong stress goes to “11”

Now your laptop breaks down, cell battery dies, or you just forgot and left the thing at home. Holy crap the world must now grind to a halt. I have seen people shuffle into my work in what looks like heroine withdrawals saying “my computer doesn’t work I need to use the internet”. When they come back to check out they look a lot more calm.

This also ties in with fears of crackers (don’t use hacker) and viruses. While being a ligitamite concern people sometimes freak out a little to much about it. Especially the people who know enough to understand the danger but not enough to know where that danger comes from. I have seen people think that captchas are a terrorist plot or that the banner ad for windows 7 in google might pop out and stranlge them. Well to be fair ads for windows 7 don’t neccisarily cheer me up but I don’t hide under my covers from them.

This is all I could think of but I am sure I am missing a lot. Really it seems that technology could be a great asset if we could get over being total nutcases. I don’t think that is going to happen any time soon so I suspect it will keep being an increasing problem. Especially as going forward they will keep finding ways of making access more and more ubiquitous. I wonder if one day there will be a moment out of the day when we are not on some kind of cam, chat, or web interface. That will be really weird.

So Following my post last week about buying gadgets I finally ordered the Alex Reader. It only took 6 months of research to determine this is the device I need. So why the hell would a Free Software Advocate order an ebook reader? What with all the controversy over the Kindle and the nook what makes the Alex so different.

Well the second you look at the Alex it is pretty obvious that it is different then just about any ebook reader that you have ever seen. So lets run through some specs and I will give my opinion as to how I imagine using this device on a daily basis.

So out of this box this device will be running the Android 1.5 OS with some custom designed applications from Spring. This device has a supper nice 3.5 touch screen and the ability to either couple or decouple the e-ink and LCD displays. So for instance you can check your email in the LCD and have a book open in the e-ink. Or you could browse the web in the LCD and then sync it to the e-ink for easy reading. Really there are tons of use possibilities with this combination. What I am excited about is the prospect of browsing the web while outside in full sun and being able to comfortably read web pages. This is something that has been impossible for both my cell phone and for my Laptop.

Lets talk about books which if you believe it is the devices target. Well you can pretty much put books from any site that support pdf or Epub. That’s right no lock in to a specific book store or vendor and no DRM. You can build your own library and transfer it if you would like. Or just store everything on the device. Basically you have complete control over this device within certain limits, but it is a huge step forward.

You can in books do everything you would expect annotate, bookmark, take voice notes, and navigate. One cool thing I think about is be reading in the top screen and researching in wikipedia with the bottom one. I am not sure how the processor would do under this type of load but I am sure I will find out.

Upgrades:

Supposedly this summer they are releasing a 3G model that will be working through some kind of provider. They are working out the details of that but I have a feeling this will never happen (more on that later). They also plan to roll out a software update to android 2.0 which I expect will greatly improve functionality. In the update They say users will get text to speech accessibility, full access to the android app store and access to the new Alex store. Other things I expect in that update is apps for access to Borders book store and possibly to Kobo as well.

Limitations:

There are some limitations to Alex. The first is the price point I hear a lot of people complaining about spending 400 dollars on an e-reader when the Ipad and other Tablet PC’s are pricing at a about 100$ more. This doesn’t bother me because with Alex I will have more freedom and I can use it in full sun and actually can get longer battery life. Also the first model will not have a 3G always on connection which in many people’s opinion puts it behind other e-readers. This doesn’t bother me because I can tether it through my phone’s 3G with Wifi. I don’t think that Spring will ever get the 3G problem worked out. What company in their right mind would give out 3G access to full on internet capable devices? This thing can do you tube, stream media and do anything an android phone could do. The only thing I could possibly foresee is that you will have to buy a plan for it yourself.

Overall Alex seems like it will be a very capable device I can’t wait to get my hands on one. And of course when I do I will post a full review. Maybe even a video review. Anyway it’s definitely a step in the right direction for e-readers because reading on an LCD panel will always suck even if we want to pretend like we don’t mind it.

links:

Wikipedia

Facebook

Homepage

First of all if you don’t already know there are really two camps out there that represent this argument. First is what I call the argument of the old guard, the gray beards, and the FSF. Namely that to properly advocate for free software you need to be using a 100% free distro and no compromises. This is the purist standpoint it makes a lot of sense because it’s easy. You can just say “ I stand for free software and never use proprietary I can do it so can you”. These people are nearly impossible to argue with because they have principles that are rock solid.

So what’s the problem with that standpoint? Well it is really hard for new users to embrace they don’t fully understand how GNU/Linux works never mind understanding the ideals. So they are easy to fall victim to using proprietary software on top of their GNU/Linux distro. In fact many people when they first switch have a very hard time with their hardware under fully free distros which frustrates adoption. This is what the second camp is hoping to solve.

The second camp which is in general the opensource community has decided to go with the mixed bag approach. So you have nearly free distro say about 90% – 95% Free Software and the rest is non-Free firmware and the ability to install non-free software through repositories or packages otherwise downloaded online. The Advantage here is that when new people switch there is a very high success rate with their hardware and also a very high chance of them staying users long enough to discover what Free Software is all about.

This approach also has problems. First off you loose the purist argument that you are all about freedom because you are willing to compromise in certain situations. This could possibly lead to hardware manufacturers and developers not taking seriously our movement and just offering us proprietary drivers for GNU/Linux instead of Freeing up their drivers. Also there are a certain number of people coming into the community which advocate for non-free software on GNU/Linux and even though they know about the movement don’t care about it. At the same time there are people that come to the movement through this and discover the Free Software movement and totally embrace it and do a lot of good work to help out. So it would look as if the mix bag approach creates mix bag results.

So it would seem one movement results in fewer users but die hard activists. While the other movement results in tons of users but it’s totally mixed as to whether or not they actually join the Free Software movement and participate. I would like to see some kind of study to see if projects like Ubuntu actually resulted in an increase of FSF participation. Or a study that shows since distros like Ubuntu have become popular if there has been an increase in proprietary software in GNU/Linux or less of it. If anyone has an idea about that please let me know. This will be probably an ongoing blog post and I would like to publish anything I could find out. So comment it up thanks!!