Posted on Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at 10:38 am
by jdeslip
The people I meet are often befuddled by my level of interest and support for open-source projects and technology like Ubuntu and Android. I can sympathize, being around anyone who cares a bit “too much” about anything can make you uncomfortable. I write today mainly to organize my thoughts and hopefully illustrate the origin of (if not justify) the interest I have for all things open. As a scientist, I see evidence everyday about how the openness of ideas and technology have positively affected society and prompted further innovation. One person or company makes a discovery and other groups are able to refine the discovery and make new discoveries using the previous advancement. Keeping information, ideas, science and technology open is crucial for future development. This is not to say that people and corporations don’t have a right to profit off their hard earned innovations and particular implementations of an idea. But, no one should have the right to turn general ideas into personal or corporate property. As a whole, we benefit mankind more (and ourselves in return) when we develop, share, and collaborate freely. The next big leap forward may come from someone or some group halfway around the world based on something we share here. In my opinion, there is no company in the tech-world who puts itself at odds with this philosophy more so than Apple. Below, I discuss, in a way that I hope illustrates why I like open-projects such as Ubuntu and Android, my reasons for not using Apple products. The use of Apple as a foil in this article is in no small part due to the troubling actions they have taken this week to stifle competition in the mobile market.
1. Apple’s software is not open-source. (with a couple exceptions). This is not necessary a deal breaker for me (I do use a lot of closed-source software in niche cases when it does the job better), but it is important enough to make me prefer open-source projects 90% of the time. Most Apple software being closed-source means interested developers cannot look at the source-code that is used to run the various Apple programs including OSX, iTunes etc… Apple is by no means alone in this category; Microsoft, Adobe and many other companies also protect their code. Most people don’t even want to see the source code; it is likely too mind-bogglingly complex to the average computer user to do anything with. So, what is the big deal? Well, paying for closed-source software is a lot like buying a car where the hood has been welded shut. You are not allowed to tweak the engine or replace a faulty component. Sure, most people wouldn’t do that themselves anyway, but what if nobody could?! You couldn’t bring it to the mechanic to have a look at it. Car and driver magazine wouldn’t be allowed to review the engine design or do a safety analysis. On a literal note, if the software in Toyota’s braking system wasn’t closed, it is likely their problems could have been avoided – or at least discovered and patched much earlier. I choose to use open-source software whenever possible because I and millions of people around the world can look at it, learn from it, help improve it and make it more robust, and, most importantly, use it to start our own projects. Even if you don’t want to look at the code yourself, you have to admit there is something very powerful about this idea. The ability to use, contribute and improve existing software is a great stimulus for innovation. There would be no Amazon, Google, ebay or TiVo today if it wasn’t for open-source software called Linux. Apple OSX is, itself, built upon the open-source operating-system BSD; Apple uses this free and open-software generously but stingily contributes few improvements (particularly the UI) back to the community. Despite the philosophical appeal of open development, it is actually the results of this development model (and not the philosophy itself) that I really like. Because the Ubuntu operating system is open-source, it is able to fit my needs and wants in ways that Apple’s or Microsofts’ software could never come close to replicating. I can have the beauty of OSX, the flexibility of Windows and the power and performance neither could hope to have.
Despite my appreciation for open-sourciness, I do actually use some closed-source software. Like most practical people, when closed-source software fulfills a niche better than that of open-source projects, I will choose the one that does the job best. So, perhaps I have not yet completely justified my anti-Apple stance. Afterall, I said earlier that Apple was a worse fit than even Microsoft, and, so far, they are looking only equally bad.
2. Apple is not open-anything. Although Microsoft’s Windows is closed source, it (and Ubuntu of course) can at least be run on any hardware you like – from a virtual machine to a netbook to even a Mac. If you want, you can go to the store and buy an awesome new video card to spiff up your Windows or Linux computer without having to buy a completely new one. Apple OSX on the other hand can only be legally run on Apple hardware. In the above example about the car, now, not only can you not open your the hood of the car, but you can only use Apple tires and fill your car up at Apple gas stations (think iPod + iTunes). If you get a flat tire, you either have to pray that you are still under warranty and Apple feels like helping you or get an entirely new car. There are people (the “hackintosh”) community who disregard the law and put OSX on non-Apple hardware. Apple has made it clear, though, that this is illegal and has brought litigation against companies for doing it, even when they pay full price for the software. Which leads me to ask the hackintosh community: why do you support a company that treats you like criminals for using the software you purchased in the way you want? Apple consistently goes out of its way to break support for its products with 3rd party applications. If you want to use a different media player than iTunes, Apple has (and likely will again) break support for future iPods and future updates. In a move that is borderline monopolistic, Apple only wants you to put music and movies on your iPod through its anointed application, iTunes, where it can sell you DRM movie/audiobook (yes I know the books come from Audible and other stores use DRM) files that cannot be played on other devices or in other programs. When you upgrade to a different machine, you will find out that you didn’t actually own the movies/books/music you bought from Apple. Even if you do like iTunes, do you really think it is ok that nobody should get any choice? I don’t.
3. They are even closed about other software you can install. Want Google-voice on your phone? Want a Super Nintendo emulator? An app that shows some skin? A wifi detector? What about the ability to watch hulu on your new $800 tablet? (Even if you know html5 is better than the closed-off flash) You can if you are using Android; you can’t if you use an Apple iPhone of iPad. Why? Because daddykins Steve Jobs doesn’t think you need to. He knows what is best for everyone. Why continue to use (or worse develop for) the iPhone platform when Apple might pull your favorite app from the market at any time? As Molly Wood from CNET says, “it’s an abusive relationship.” Sure, you can jailbreak your phone to add a bunch of apps Apple doesn’t want you to, but then, once again, you are breaking the law and are at Apple’s mercy. To risk sounding like a broken record, why support a company that treats you like a criminal? I choose not to.
4. The final straw. Not only does Apple control exactly how you can use any Apple device, they now want to take away your choice to use any other device as well. This week they brought a lawsuit against HTC, the developer of the majority of Android phones, alleging 20 Apple patent violations. Many of these patents seem to be comprised of trivial ideas that should be non-patentable and/or ideas Apple itself stole from other companies. It is clear that Apple is scared of the consumer choice that competition brings and is scared of the innovation that is possible within the open Android framework. Patents were intended to promote independent innovation by protecting small inventors from being scooped by large established corporations. Apple is hijacking the patent system to protect the interests of their large corporation against any competition at all. This is an incredibly dangerous move* that could stifle innovation for many years to come. The real problem is in the absurd use of the patent system by many companies today; imagine how different the world would be if Henry Ford were able to patent every trivial part of the car – there’d have been no competition and no continued development (thanks BOL for analogy). If someone was allowed to patent all the ideas relevant to traveling by air, we might still be stuck with hot-air balloons instead of airplanes. While I could happily ignore complaints 1-3, since nobody is forcing me to use Apple’s restrictive products, this latest patent attack has really put Apple back right into my face. It’s apparently not enough for Apple to control exactly how everyone is allowed to use Apple products, they now want to tell you exactly which other products you are allowed to use as well.
In the important realm of science, technology and ideas, I believe that the continual conversion of ideas and development effort into the private property of companies like Apple is a great threat to continued free innovation if such a patent attack is allowed to stand.
*Edits:
Thanks to comments below (even those calling me a troll) for some corrections. I would like to point out these are my personal reasons for not using Apple products. I trust that everyone can come to their own decision about whether these points matter to them or not. As I said above, if it wasn’t for “the final straw”, I would happily go about my days ignoring Apple’s existence. It is only when they try to control the choices I have in using other products that they warrant my bemoaning. And, no, I don’t think Apple (or its employees) are evil. I am friends with some of them. I think their general philosophy is nearly opposite that of open-source, and their patent attack dangerous and self-serving. But, “evil”, nah…
precedent -> move (thanks Carl)
worse -> “worse fit” (for me that is, best not to use general statements)
Thanks to Phillip (misc BSD software), Jeff (opencl) and myself (grand-central) for pointing out open-source projects Apple has contributed to.
Posted on Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 12:02 pm
by jdeslip
In my opinion, Google’s web-services and Linux go together like pie and ice-cream. Though, there are some people in this very LUG that would disagree with me about Google’s benevolence, there is no denying the quality and convenience of gmail etc… Moreover, even though Google’s web services themselves are not open-source, they are built on top of an open framework and toolset, and Google itself sponsors some great open-source projects (chromium, android, Kernel development etc).
If you are of a like mind, you probably already use google’s services like gmail, google-voice (the best thing since sliced bread) and google reader. Like me, you might have been in a constant search for a notifier applet for your taskbar for these services. I have used CheckGMail for a long time, and then docky’s builtin gmail applet, but I have now found a real winner after reading a post at OMG!Ubuntu. It’s called googsystray; it’s one program that looks great and notifies you of new messages in gmail, wave, gvoice and google reader in your taskbar. It comes with a lot of nice features. For example, you can send SMS messages with google-voice right from the applet.
Here are a couple screenshots:
And here is one screen cap from the original OMG!Ubuntu Article where more details can be found:
Go ahead, follow the link above, grab the .deb and give it a whirl.
Posted on Monday, February 15, 2010 at 4:44 pm
by natet128
Skyhook Wireless is a company that does one thing, and does it well: wardriving. They send vans equipped with wifi-detecting equipment and GPSs (wait, is that the plural of GPS? Is it GPSii?) and log the data. Unfortunately, they do not make their data publicly available. What they do have, however, is a XML API.
With a simple HTTP POST, you can (quite accurately) determine the location of a computer based on the BSSIDs (MAC addresses) and signal strengths of the networks it sees. You receive back an easily-parsed XML document containing latitude, longitude, and street address. However, Skyhook is quite bad at figuring out street addresses; the latitude-longitude data is much more helpful.
Skyhook has a Javascript API for web apps with a special browser plugin. The C API is handy for C apps (even has a Linux version!). But those are both wrappers over the simple XML protocol.
OATT is a Sourceforge project to create an open antitheft tracker for stolen laptops. Full disclosure: I am the admin of the project. For laptops without (insert plural of GPS here), I decided to use Skyhook and created a handy Python wrapper.
To use this wrapper in other Python apps, you must do three things (not including downloading the code and cd’ing into the source.)
- From a shell, run “sudo IWList.py”. This will save network information accessible only to root to a file. To update location, you must rerun this command.
- In your Python program (the OATT source must be in your $PYTHONPATH), add “import lookup” to the top of the source.
- In your Python program, read the contents of “lookup.results”. This is a dictionary with the following keys:
- “address”: This is a tuple containing the house number, street, city, state, country, and zipcode, in that order.
- “latlong”: This is a tuple containing the latitude and longitude (both with very many digits after the decimal) in that order.
- “accuracy”: This is a value taken from the raw Skyhook data. It represents the accuracy in some sort of units.
I am not affiliated in any way with Skyhook. However, they are quite technically impressive and I believe the API should be in much wider use.
Posted on Friday, February 5, 2010 at 7:08 pm
by akkilles3
In this article I shall attempt to relive my experience finding, beginning to use; and finally full conversion into a GNU/Linux desktop user. I will enumerate both the frustrations and the pleasures experienced during this first year of use. In an attempt at full disclosure my opinions and bias will be sprinkled throughout; after all this is written entirely from personal perspective. In the end the purpose of writing this is to provide the experience of one local (eastbay) user to any and all people who have started to use, or contemplated using Linux (shortened from Gnu/Linux for brevity) for any reason.
In February of 2009 I was paying money for inferior software, third world phone support, and software to protect me against inferior software. I had had enough of the frustration wih being infected with spyware, viruses, and expensive proprietary software. And yet how to tumble out of the immense monetary dryer set to Permanent Press? Then a realization buried beneath the frustration finally arrived: the problem wasn’t Micro$oft. It was me. I had been scared of change; sceptical of an operating system being free. So I set out to research what this Linux was. How could an OS be free? Who was doing this? I used the internet for all my research. I read the history of the Gnu project, copyleft, and Linus Torvalds. I learned why it was free and remain grateful. Next I needed to find out if it was for me. To accomplish this I decided to aggregate opinions of everyday Linux users from various websites. Gleaned from across all the blogs, forums, and video posting sites I visited the zeitgeist was ubiquitous: Linux users were elated with their OS. The virtues extolled by most are Linux being virtually virus free, open source, and community oriented.
So I had found a free replacement for the Windoze but it came with a steep learning curve. I ran into problems getting online since at the time I knew nothing about command line interfaces, package managers, or even simply a network manager. This was for my 3G USB dongle I had at the time. All I knew up to that point was plug and play connectivity. I hadn’t been exposed to anything more than click here and here then watch for the spinny thing and a balloon popup notifying me that I was online. I didn’t understand device support or (I had only a notion of) what a driver actually was. I was too soft from allowing myself to be spoon-fed by a Microsoft GUI. Fortunately for me, after a tweak or two, it became easy to get online while using Ubuntu. Next came installing video and audio codecs so that I could watch movies. What I had done before was install movie playing software from CD’s that I had to buy, all wrapped in shiny paper, so that I didn’t have to deal with Windows Media Player. Now, so long as I was online, I could use the free package manager to download free codecs. All it required was a search engine to find out how. After all this I decided to set up dual booting between Ubuntu and Windows. Several months would elapse before I knew enough about using even a ‘desktop-friendly’ distro such as Ubuntu so that I could ditch all the bloatware from my laptop and use Linux as my sole OS. It could have been a lot easier had I simply visited my local Linux user group; but instead, I decided to not ask any questions on a forum or blog and RTFM like I was told to from the old hacker texts I downloaded.
I would like to make this point: you don’t need to go the same route as I did. If you are busy with work, family, and other activities; and also, you would like to actually meet someone in person rather than going back and forth on a Q&A forum, come visit us at the next BerkeleyLUG meeting. This way you can get a feel for the community in general; which in my opinion is great. Or perhaps even more pertinent for someone who wants to try Linux for the first time: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Grantbow/UbuntuForTheVillage. When I, with trepidation at being such a newb, did attend my first meeting I was delighted to find anyone from new users such as myself to advanced users. Some of these advanced users can be seen without even a GUI; they hardly use anything but the command line! That kind of elegance I find fascinating; and it winds my clock aspiring to communicate with my hardware only a layer or two removed from the components as they do.
The free and open source software community and computing in general have propelled me so much that now I find myself yearning to be deeply involved with computerization. In fact I mean to ‘drop out’ of my current profession to pursue a different career. It is my sincere hope that this article will nudge at least someone out of their Redmond, WA induced torpor and into an adventure in the world of FOSS. Please join us at BerkeleyLUG.
P.S. Here is a short glossary of acronyms used:
FOSS – Free and Open Source Software
GNU - Gnu’s Not Unix
GUI – Graphical User Interface
LUG – Linux Users Group
OS – Operating System
RTFM – Read The F*****g Manual
Posted on Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 12:28 pm
by jdeslip
To a Linux user like myself, an iPod is more or less a fancy paperweight; since Apple does not provide a version of iTunes for Linux. Yes, it sorta works in Wine and does work well in a VirtualBox… but, really, why bother? Even if there was an iTunes client for Linux, I probably wouldn’t want to use it when there are already sleeker, faster and more complete media players for Linux available like Banshee, Songbird and Amarok. This doesn’t mean I don’t get a little jealous about the iPod/iTunes experience, though.
Android users often ask if there is an iTunes like app for synching their music to their Android phone. The answer is yes – unlike the iPod, Android is an open platform and users can use any number of applications to sync their music collection to their phone, including simply dragging and dropping your music folder onto the android device. Drag and drop works well enough, but if you want to sync podcasts, playlists and album art to the device automatically, you need something a bit more sophisticated. Banshee does all of this for you and more. When you plug in your Android device (for Nexus One support pictured below you need the most recent package from the Banshee PPA), Banshee automatically shows you the music and videos on the device. If you have purchased music from the AmazonMP3 store on the phone, Banshee recognizes it and gives you the option to import it to the music collection on your computer. It then gives the option to sync your music collection to the phone. It will also automatically, sync your newly downloaded podcasts, artwork and playlists with the phone. Add or delete a file in Banshee, and it is added/removed from your Android device the next time your sync as well (you can instead choose to manually manage which songs or playlists go to the device). Downloaded a new podcast, or listened to an old one? That change is reflected on your Android phone the next time you sync as well.
By the way, got an old iPod lying around? Try putting Rockbox on it, Banshee detects and syncs Rockbox devices flawlessly.
When you consider that Banshee also plays and manages your video collection, looks elegant, has a ton of useful plugins, including amazing Last.FM support, and has full-time support from Novell; you’d think it would be a no brainer for Ubuntu to switch from Rhythmbox to Banshee. Appparantly Ubuntu is hung up on the few things Rhythmbox has that Banshee doesn’t like crossfading and a magnatune music store (despite the fact that Banshee now has EMusic support and demand for magnatune is small compared to stores like EMusic and AmazonMP3). And, of course, there is the anti-mono contingent. Whatever the reason, it’s sad that Ubuntu is holding on to Rhythmbox and that the great Android support to be had with Banshee won’t be default.
Edits:
In the comments below, it was pointed out that gtkpod can sync newer iPods. That is good news. When I had an iPod Touch a year or so ago, the only way to sync it on Linux was the jailbreak it and use ssh to get into the device…
OMG!Ubuntu posted a nice summary of new features coming in Banshee 1.5.3 to be released tomorrow: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/01/whats-new-in-banshee-153-folder.html
Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 at 5:44 pm
by einfeldt
Berkeley High School student Kory Malmrose will be hosting a triage fest tomorrow, Saturday Oct 31 and Sunday, Nov 1, at the Zareason shop in North Berkeley. If anyone is bored tomorrow and would like to come assemble machines for Linux labs for schools in Mexico, this will be guaranteed to be a good time. Plus free pizza!!
As an added bonus, this project will be held at the Zareason shop in Berkeley, the site where many of us have purchased pre-installed Linux machines. Come on over and see the west coast’s best Linux-only retailed in action!
Here is Kory’s announcement:
####################
I need help frankensteining 30 desktops so I can send them to Mexico for a Technology Transfer Program led by Stormy Peters of the GNOME Foundation. Christian Einfeldt was nice enough to give us the hardware and last weekend we moved them from SF to my family’s computer shop in Berkeley. The project is for my Eagle Scout. I was going to have a group of friends help that helped my brother with his Eagle Project, but something came up at the last minute and now I have only one helper on Saturday and possibly two on Sunday (all from the Berkeley LUG). Are there any other LUG volunteers in the Bay area who can help me out?
The first session is at 10 am on Saturday (and other on Sunday) at our shop at 1647 Hopkins St, Berkeley, 94707. The BART is close & we can pick you up from there if that makes it easier. We’re also getting some great Gioia pizza and some good stuff from Hopkins Bakery for lunch. Stay however long you like and if you can’t come at 10, we have other times that will work too. Let me know if you can help.
Thanks for helping out at the last minute. I really appreciate it.
Posted on Monday, October 26, 2009 at 1:09 pm
by winferno
The 16th bi-annual Ludum Dare (a.k.a. LD48) game programming contest is coming up in December. This is a really fun, very informal, online event that is free to enter. Anyone interested in video game programming should have a look. Their web site can explain the event better than I, so have a look.
Essentially, contestants submit ‘themes’, and are able to vote on these themes. At the moment the contest begins, the winning theme is announced and the contestants work to build a game that incorporates this theme. Before the 48-hour deadline, entries must be submitted and posted online (you will need a web hosting account, FTP site, etc.) and contestants have two weeks (I believe) in which to cast their vote for winning entries (there are categories). Typically, contestants are working solo – this often leads to some pretty funny graphics and sound effects. =)
As far as I know, the contest is open to submissions programmed in any language, designed to run on any platform. People are all across the board with their entries; coding games in assembly to run on Nintendo emulators, using Python/Pygame, using OpenGL, SDL. There are some guidelines about which libraries are and would be considered off-limits. Also, any game content (graphics, sounds, etc.) must be created during the time of the contest.
I threw down the gauntlet in LD48 #14 last year, and can say that I had a blast. People stay very active on the contest’s IRC channel during the event, and the forum is also very active with lots of crazy sleep deprived and/or caffeine fueled postings during the event. Another popular activity is the recording of timelapse videos, showing the contestants screen and/or torso via webcam. Here is a link to my timelapse video on YouTube.
While the majority of the 100+ game entries in LD48 #14 were for Windows, there were several Linux games. My entry was a Linux game using C/C++ and OpenGL for graphics. I think that this event is a great opportunity to express the open-source mentality in a fun, creative, and challenging way. I hope some of the readers here will consider giving this a shot, or at least passing this on to some friends. Game on!
Posted on Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 10:13 am
by goosbears
OS Choices Indeed (for most!)
I myself am currently engaging in a pseudo-scientific self-study on optimizing some very low-end PCs with Linux.
Hardware that I obtained f or negligible cost
Pentium I MMX 200MHz
64MB 60ns EDO RAM
1 x 1GB hd, 1 x 2GB hdd
The pre-existing MS-Windows 98(FE) is still required for a minimal number of applications….. boo/hiss 
Pentium I MMX 200MHz
160MB 60ns EDO RAM
1 x 8GB hd
The pre-existing MS-Windows ME is still required for a minimal number of applications….. boo/hiss
Pentium III 500MHz Celeron
256MB PC100 SDRAM
1 x 10GB hd
Pre-existing MS-Windows 2000 wiped clean off after BIOS updated — yay 
Pentium III 600MHz-E (Energy-saving)
256MB PC100 SDRAM
1 x 10GB hd
Pre-existing MS-Windows 2000 wiped clean off after BIOS updated — yay
————————————
Routine questions I did ask and still ask myself on these:
- Do these low-end PCs power on, boot up and otherwise function at operable base-levels (motherboard, BIOS, CMOS, RAM… etc.) ???
- Are BIOS revisions as up-to-date as possible for these old PC’s ??
- What purpose can these low-end PC’s be BEST used for (e.g., “starter” office productivity workstations, simple multimedia workstations, router/firewall appliances, … etc.) ???
No DVD or USB-booting, no wireless setup, no CD-burning capabilities
———————————————————
My own groundrules RE: distros used
NO K/Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” Linux, NO Fedora 11 Linux, NO OpenSUSE 11.x Linux, NO Mandriva 2009.x Linux
YES low-weight floppy and CD-R installable Linux distros having minimalistic X-Windows
——————————————————
Distros used
Basic Linux 3.50 ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/baslinux/index.html
Damn Small Linux (DSL) http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall
- DSL 3.4.12 Syslinux
- DSL 4.4.10 Syslinux
Slackware Linux 13.0 http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=slackware
Absolute Linux 13.0.3 http://www.absolutelinux.org/
Zenwalk Linux 6.2 Standard http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=zenwalk (c’mon for goodness sakes, this is Berkeley!)
Debian GNU/Linux “lenny”/stable 5.0.3 XFCE+LXDE http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=debian
Debian GNU/Linux “squeeze”/testing 5.0.2 XFCE+LXDE http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090730
Knoppix EN[glish] 5.1.1CD http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=03956
Eventually(maybe!), Puppy Linux 4.3.x, MEPIS 8.x.x, and/or Xubuntu/Lubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” installation CDs
———————————–
Used solely as testing LiveCD’s, and for distro-downloading/CD-burning on another PC :
Knoppix ENglish 6.0.1CD http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=05299
Lubuntu 9.10 Lyxis Beta 23 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu and http://download.lxde.org/lubuntu-9.10/
TinyCore Linux 2.4.1 http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=tinycore
—
Used as low-spec routers/firewalls
FREESCO http://www.freesco.info/index.php
floppyfw http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/
Devil-Linux http://www.devil-linux.org/home/index.php
—
I’ve done all the ISO/img downloads and burning, and am more than halfway finished performing Linux installs on all four low-end PCs.
I absolutely (not the above distro;-) STILL NEED TO perform extensive diagnoses and troubleshooting with these older PC both BEFORE and DURING their Linux installations.
Results of this pseudo-scientific study soon to follow — maybe within about two months ??
-Aaron / GoOSBears
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