SOPA? Get YOUR message across.

A couple of good things were accomplished today.  I had the chance to talk with an old friend who incidentally is a Network Engineer in Palo Alto and we had the opportunity to kick around some ideas for getting around SOPA.

Turns out, it may not be that hard to do...if you don't mind breaking a federal law or two.

My friend Katie had some bumper stickers made up that pretty much echoes my sentiments of SOPA/PIPA.  I normally don't dally in bumper stickers but this one is going on the old Explorer as soon as it arrives in the mail.  5 bucks out the door to include shipping.

AND....within the next few hours, the name Lamar Smith and the term "Congressional Quisling" will appear in most 1st page search results with the search string "Lamar Smith".

So yeah...it's been a productive day in a pissed-off-to-the-bone sort of way.

And Jason Johnston, the network engineer for Ticom met with me today and helped us load 18 donated HP Proliant DL380's into the Explorer.  (seems that I might need rear shocks here soon).  We'll be putting those up for sale here soon for cheap so if you are interested let me know.

Lamar Smith - Congressional Quisling.  That has a nice ring to it.

All-righty then.....

Why Stop Billions When You Can Stop Millions....?

I try not to get too worked up about much any more. Most angst is just wasted neurons. Stuff works itself out just fine without me encouraging another ulcer or sleepless night. I have a rule I've come to live by and it has worked for me wonderfully.

It is called the 24 hour rule.

When I find myself in a tither or feel that uncomfortable sensation of having my shorts in a bunch, I simply ask myself:

What impact will this problem or situation have on me in 24 hours?

Most of the time, the answer is none.  That is my cue to dial it down a notch and go find something constructive to do.

But this SOPA thing.....

So I engaged my 24 hour rule there too, but I projected it into the future....24 hours after it passed.

You know what?  Some of it is worth worrying about.....

And some of it isn't.

Let's get to the "isn't" first.

What the Congressman from the 21st District of Texas does not understand at the fundamental level is software, and it's engineered purpose.  Software is designed to solve problems.

Without it, the Internet is all but meaningless.  Without a browser, you got nothin'.  Without CMS, you got nothin'.  Without Facebook you got....uh, large chunks of your life back....

But that's not the point.


The Point is, software and network engineers will find a way around this.  It's what they do.

Be it a browser extension or a VPN solution, people will access what they want to access.  What the **AA's and Congress fail to realize is that the Genie is out of the bottle.  The Internet is what it is and some bought-and-paid-for congressional quisling isn't going to legislate it otherwise.

From my point of view, Congressman Lamar Smith is that congressional quisling.

Has any industry leader figured out that if you make the latest episode of Dexter available after network airing, people like me would pay to watch it?  No....that would mean changing their business model to fit within the 21st century.  Deity Forbid....

Ok, so they write the law stating that designing or using a tool to bypass these "laws" are themselves illegal.  They will be made available off the US shores in such abundance that no one will shut them all down or for long.  Where is the enforcement?  Tens of thousands of users of such tools become a darknet and they get the content they want, with nobody the wiser.

And I am personally willing to teach anyone wanting to get to a "rogue website" exactly how to do it.

See, there are some extremely brilliant people out there who have just a little bit of renegade in them.  SOPA wont stop them....it will be a challenge.  Just like DVD Jon took care of bid'ness, so will these hackers and engineers smash the SOPA barriers and allow the free flow of traffic.

Some would argue that Jon Lech Johansen became such a painful thorn in the side of Steve Jobs, it ultimately led to him throwing in the towel  on DRM music.  Another such pioneer will do the same thing to Lamar Smith.  Smith has such utter contempt for his constituents that he all but refused to hear testimony from security and network professionals opposing SOPA.

You cannot convince me that Lamar Smith is not under intense pressure from the **AA to get this law passed.   He is willing to pass a law so disconnected from Internet technology, that it will most certainly fragment the Internet as we know it today.

That doesn't take into consideration the harm he is doing to US relations on a world-wide basis.  Already the EU has taken a firm stand against SOPA.  But all the protest in the world, literally, in the world, cannot blunt the dreams of Congressmen sitting in their counting rooms, raking in the campaign contributions from the likes of Time Warner and Comcast.

Of course, I would normally take some satisfaction in knowing that he will probably be thrown out of office on his a$$ come 2012, but given the fact that Chris Dodd is there to catch him and offer him a cushy job offsets that warm fuzzy possibility.

So yeah, we're being told to email our representatives and protest SOPA.

Don't bother.

You will receive the same thing I received...a form letter mechanically stating the reasons to support SOPA.   Jobs, yada, yada, yada.  Protecting American IP, yada, yada, yada....it takes a staffer about 30 seconds to scan your email and hit send on their boiler-plate response.

You and your "opinion" are forgotten in less than a minute.

Get that person on the phone and raise hell.  Remind said staffer that the congressman from X state is going to lose his job over support of this bill.  Don't let them lapse into talking points.  Sure you are going to spend some time on hold but outside of a personal appearance, your phone call is the most effective way of getting your message across.

Regardless of what happens to Lamar Smith personally or professionally, he will forever be known as The Man That Broke The Internet.

Of course, how a man can usurp the US constitution and be clapped on the back for his efforts is beyond me.

It always has been.

All-righty then...

Christian Rock Hard
Get More: SOUTH
PARKmore...

We Bet on This Wallpaper....

Back in the early part of November, we asked our readership to help us design a default wallpaper to go out on our HeliOS Computers.  Submissions were slow at first, with only three people submitting their work, but as November morphed into December, we began receiving several a day.

In most any situation where you have artists of any sort presenting their work, there are always one or two that jump out and shine over the rest.  This wasn't true for our little contest.  Every week, I would guess to myself that a particular entry was the winner, just in time to receive another one that I liked better.

In no particular order, I would like to thank John Chival, Sean Robinson, Mark Adams, Jeremy Gooch and Clayton Ramos.  My sincere thanks to everyone who submitted their work for HeliOS.  Please pardon the fact that I did not assign author names with particular entries.  This is the busiest time of year for HeliOS and working just myself this year has me counting minutes.  I will correct this as soon as time allows.

And the winner?

After what can only be described as "spirited discussion", the kids that received HeliOS computers in the month of December have voted for a submission by Mark Adams.  We've named it "Chips In"

You can see the finalist submissions here.  And again, thank you to every one of you for helping us do what we do.  We will alternate these wallpapers from time to time and all of them will be used.

All Righty Then...

Throughout this week.....

Regardless of your religion or culture, let us take December 25th as a universal moment.

A day to re-evaluate our priorities, our biases and ultimately, how we affect the world and those within it.  Our time here is short and sometimes our daily challenges can blind us to what is really important.  How we treat each other.

             Merry Christmas from all of us to you.

Of Penguins and Presents.....

I have the best job I can imagine.

I have the opportunity to give computers to kids that cannot afford them.

It isn't often easy...there is a lot of physical work, and as my neck injury deteriorates into Chronic Disk Disease, I am relying more and more upon our great pool of volunteers to do the literal heavy lifting.  But all things considered, I am probably at the best place ever in my life.

Can you imagine having a job that frees people from proprietary operating systems and presents them with a whole new perspective on technology?  It  really is a dream job.

So, last week I visited with a single mom family of four.  Shannon works two jobs to keep a roof over their heads.  Her kids are Aaron - 14, Hope - 12, Devon - 9 and Joshua - 4.  Dad is serving a 30 year sentence in a North Carolina penitentiary for killing a family of 3 while driving drunk.

They died on December 23rd, 2006.

He won't be home any time soon.

So while sitting at the computer, showing them their new Linux system, Joshua asked me plain and simple:

"Does Santa come to your house?"

I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it and opened it again to speak...much like a fish out of water.  I glanced over at Shannon and she looked at me, obviously amused at my discomfort.

"Why yes Josh, he does visit my house."

His eyes grew big as if he was happy to get an answer of any sort.

"Does he really give you presents?"

I just nodded and smiled then looked back on the computer screen.  See, personally; and even at an early age, I've been uncomfortable with the whole Santa Claus thing.  Again, it's a personal thing and I don't judge or begrudge anyone for perpetuating the tradition.  It just sits inside me wrong.  But then I came upon the answer I wanted to give him.

"You bet he does Josh.  He brings me all of these computers to give to kids like you."

And he does.

Sometimes Santa is dressed like a company CEO, sometimes she is acting as the IT manager for her company, and other times he is simply someone who hears about HeliOS and donates their usable but unused computer to us.

Santa Claus has many identities, many stations in life and lives in the most unusual places.  Sometimes, Santa shows up at our door with their toolkits, ready to spend the whole day getting computers ready to go out to our kids.  Often, we can't even buy them lunch for their efforts but they come anyway.  Regardless of who she is at the time, Santa is the linchpin of this whole HeliOS thing.  Without him, there wouldn't be any HeliOS Project.

So to all those who have been Santa for us, I want to give you our most heartfelt thanks.  See, as I said above, this is probably the best my life has ever been.  No, I don't make a lot of money and the hours can be long and odd at times, but the sense of purpose I gain from doing what I do offsets that by a huge margin.

And to the many of you who have asked me what I wanted Santa to bring this year?

Nothing.

I have a great job, a warm place to live and work and I have loving people that surround me.  To ask any more of The Universe would seem selfish to me.

For those that insist, HeliOS is always accepting of gifts, but personally, for me....

I can't think of anything I want more than what I already have.  Regardless of your religious or cultural holding, I want to wish you nothing but good things in your life and I can only hope than everyone in the world could be as content as I.....

And behold the wonderment of this season through the eyes of Joshua.

All-Righty Then...

So Let Me Tell You What Happened Next.....

First off, I want to thank the hundreds of you who emailed or responded to the 12 year old girl's plight, after her mom's boyfriend hijacked her HeliOS Computer.

We talked about it here.

I was extremely uncomfortable in the actions I had to take in this drama.  From my perspective, there was real trouble in this household and I did in fact contact a friend at CPS.

I probably shouldn't reveal all the facts due to pending legal actions but as it was investigated, there was abuse taking place in that house and the girlfriend-beater boyfriend was arrested.  He was strongly advised by the mom's father to find residence outside of Texas and Florida has accepted his probation terms and he now resides there.

It is extremely uncomfortable to find yourself in a position like this and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.  Child Protective Services has a reputation of being heavy-handed here in Texas and removing children from homes on the slightest whim.  Fortunately in this case, the spidey senses were correct.  I don't think I could sleep very well if I had initiated an investigation where things were not as they appeared.

At any rate, this is posted just so all of you who inquired would know that things worked out ok for Marley.  Her and her mom are doing fine and now residing at a different place with a different and unlisted phone number.

I for one feel that the good guys scored one here.  My thanks to PI Rich Hector for stepping in and lending me a hand.

All-Righty Then...

What Was Geek is Now Chic.....

I ascribe to the theory of "Trickle-down Technology".

What once resided in the Realm of Geeks, ultimately flows down to those less than technically-astute.  Fact is, the technology isn't really any different from top to bottom, but the way of presenting it to the user is.

The perfect example is The Evolution of Linux as an operating system.  And yes, I frequently commit the faux pas of referring to the entire operating system as "Linux"...knowing full well that Linux is the kernel.

God knows I've been bludgeoned with the distinction over the years.


And please...not Gnu/Linux.  For better or worse, that battle is lost.  Let's move on.

But my point is this.  What used to be accomplished only at the command line now has pretty, blinky, wobbly, transparent GUIs to get the job done.  Why?  Because normal people don't think in one's and zero's.  They don't connect with cryptic lines of archaic symbols and letters.

They relate to a graphical environment, and intuitive ways of interpreting data.

So, one of my pet peeves over the years has resided within the browser experience.  Be it Firefox, Internet Exploder or any other browser, page load times, even with the fastest available broadband has been, at times, abysmal.

Used to be, only those comfortable in about:config, text editors or viewing page sources could suss out the root of the problem.  The rest of us had to tolerate the myriad of ads and flash junk loading before we could get to the meat of the page.

That's changed for the better and while such options are just now becoming apparent to many everyday computer users...they are in fact becoming apparent.

As I've mentioned in the past, I will spend some of my down time watching TV or movies at fastpasstv.ms.  These days I don't pirate movies or TV shows much any more.  I let others do it for me and reap the benefits.   The problem is, many of these pages "can be" rift with gnarly java scripts and pop ups that appear so fast, they could induce a seizure for some.

There are two tools in my Firefox arsenal that combat these nicely.

1.  Adblock plus

2.  Ghostery

Now, Adblock Plus is old news for the most part.  Many of us have been using it for a number of years and wouldn't think of browsing without it.  Yes, I know there are others out there but to keep it simple, I'm just going to talk about these for the time being.

But Ghostery is something I've missed in the past.  Where Adblock did fail me from time to time, Ghostery filled in and does a great job.  How?  From their website:

"Ghostery sees the invisible web - tags, web bugs, pixels and beacons. Ghostery tracks the trackers and gives you a roll-call of the ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers, and other companies interested in your activity."

Not only can you see who's tracking you, bothering you and slowing you down...you have the opportunity to block them from your browsing experience.  You can leave the ones you think you want or are benign and block the rest.

Take a look at the graphic here.  When Ghostery  is active, it will give you a ten second popup, telling you the bugs, trackers, and other nuisances that are slowing you down.  I won't name the site taken here but trust me, with Ghostery as an active extension, the page load time dropped by sixteen seconds.


That's amazing....and infuriating at the same time.  Look at the garbage that loaded with that web page.

Please note, even the ageless and infamous DoubleClick is shot dead in its tracks.  That is a beautiful, beautiful thing in itself.

Unfortunately, one of my very favorite websites gives me these sort of problems from time to time.  LXer.com uses Tribal Fusion to serve their ads, and hey...ads done in moderation are not a bad thing.  Every website needs to At Least cover their costs of hosting and maintenance.  I don't begrudge anyone that.  What I do take issue with is an ad server blocking the page load for 1 to 2 minutes at a time.  It doesn't happen all the time but when it does, it is excruciating.

I just won't tolerate that and I don't think it's fair for any website to expect it of you or me.

Don't even get me started on Daniweb or LinuxToday.

So, while Tribal Fusion might be the only ad server active on LXer, it is one of the most annoying and unfortunately, I turn on blocking for LXer when it seems to be choking.  I don't have all day to wait for an ad to load.

And you don't either.

So yes, the everyday user is getting hip to their choices and I am seeing it more and more every day.

And that makes me feel great.  The geeks have done good.

All-Righty Then...

Suicide by Silverlight?

Muktware caught my eye this morning via Google reader.  the title?

LoveFilms Goes Suicidal, Ditches Flash For Silverlight

Say what?  But, but....I thought Silverlight was dead? 

Apparently not.

As quoted from the Muktware article:

 

"LoveFilms, an Amazon company, is ditching the dying Flash technology for already dead Microsoft's Silverlight. The move gives indications that Flash will soon lose its significance on the PC as well. Adobe recently announced killing Flash on mobile platforms.

The bad news is the insecure Hollywood studios are going with Microsoft's non-standard technology Silverlight. I wonder if Microsoft pushed for Silverlight as it sees Adobe killing Flash fo good."

So which is it?  Is the rumor of Silverlight's death grossly exaggerated or does LoveFilms know something we don't?

It's obvious that the MPAA has their greasy hands all over this decision, and there is probably little doubt that any licensing agreement between LoveFilms and the content owners was contingent upon them switching over to Silverlight.

 Duh....I figured that all out on my own.

Let me 'splain something to those that demanded this change-over. 

The people that are "stealing" from you are going to do it regardless of whatever bullpoot DRM you put up as an obstacle.  Fact is, there are streaming websites that locate themselves WAYYYY out of the legal reach of the "AA's" and US law.  Some of the servers are physically located in places like Tonga, The Bahamas and Sweden. They show stuff literally minutes after its first premiere or showing.

I can usually watch a television show that aired PST just minutes after it airs in my time zone...without the bloody commercials.  You have no idea how much that in itself is of value to me.  I despise television commercials, almost as much as the ones they now want me to watch in a movie theater.

The particular site I use does not actually host any files but acts as a link page for those that do....and there are a lot of them.  One movie or TV series episode might be listed under 10 or more servers showing the same program.  Recently this "linkpage" was taken down by British authorities and the site operator was arrested.  No sooner did he make bail, he purchased new servers, registered his website under a .ms domain and they were back in business.  Downtime?

 About 4 days.

At this moment. I have 11-11-11 paused as I write this entry.

Yeah, it might be a cam or a screener but as one who boycotts the movie houses anyway, I get to watch it in the comfort of my home, and with the aid of a certain Firefox extension, I can slide the burned disk of said infringement into my "playsanyformat" box and watch it on a 42 inch TV screen.

These devices were, at one time, considered illegal via the DMCA for import into the US but said laws were challenged and they are available in some stores and most places online.  I payed 45.00 for mine but prices range extensively so shop cautiously.

So what good does this move to Silverlight do....I mean outside of the Microsoft Counting Rooms?

Again, DRM hobbles the legitimate user and provides a few giggles for everyone else.  See, I never "pirated" a thing until 2000.  That's the year Metallica and Dr. Dre sued Napster and the whole filesharing thing got dragged kicking and screaming into US awareness.

I made it a point to download every single song I could possibly consider enjoying that same day.  My entire music collection consists of 419 illegally downloaded songs...songs that I still play on a weekly basis.  I would no sooner purchase a major recording company CD or a movie DVD than I would girl-slap Mike Tyson.

 When the artist gets a more proportionate share of the sale, then, I will re-examine my stand.  But while the RIAA siphons off the real money percentage-wise...well, I personally cannot condemn the practice regardless of how wrong it might be. My last foray into the seedy world (sorry) of music downloading?

Nickleback.  That gives you an idea of what I think of most commercialized music since then.

Case on point, I've bought The Who - Who's Next album/CD six times in my life.  It either gets scratched, lost or just plain worn out.  Since the year 2000, I haven't purchased a replacement copy once.  My opposition to a heavy-handed RIAA saw to that.  So instead of discouraging pirate behavior, you've encouraged it?  How many other customers have done the same thing worldwide?  I would guess a bunch.

I can name one sweet old lady who did the same thing.

As soon as I get some clarification on certain statute of limitation laws, I will tell you a story about something I was involved in between 2001 and 2003.  I am proud to have been a part of this "project", although I've never talked about it publicly.  

But I will if I can.  I think you will like it.  Stay Tuned.

All-Righty Then