steven n fettig's Jitterin' Thoughts

Yes it is inexpensive, and yes I thought it would be great, but it is only so-so and all because it is missing a display. The iPod Shuffle has been a great addition to my music device collection - a old-turned-new 17" PowerBook is the center of my media hub, but I constantly find myself looking for a display to see what is happening - i.e. is it in Play mode, stop mode, sleep mode, etc. The problem with the Shuffle's simplicity is that it is actually complicated. The green/orange LED blinks in different manners and to be quite honest, I don't want to learn what each type of blinking means. (I have the same gripe about the old HP LaserJet 2000/2100/2200's - what would it have cost to put a 2-line LCD display on a $900 printer? It certainly would have allowed me to diagnose problems more easily.) I would be happy with a display that says nothing but what the Shuffle is doing - i.e. play, stop, ff, rw, pause (maybe even on and off). It is difficult to gather whether the Shuffle is playing if the ambient noise is like that of a loud car or fitness center and you are currently playing a song that has a very soft beginning or soft points during music play (the best example being classical music).

Most little items I have bought over the years similar to the Shuffle have ended up in a drawer somewhere to be used only a few times until I realize they are more of a pain than a convenience. Thus far, it is not the case. It is light and easy to configure using the iTunes interface that I have grown to appreciate over the years. (My first experience with a Memory Stick Walkman was a dismal failure - due to Sony's lack of creativity or ability to create a transfer program that was easy to use. I spent $250 on the device and used it three times. I finally threw it out last week - after four years of sitting in my laptop bag.) I still cannot get over the lack of display, however. As an initial criticism of the device, I shrugged and said, "what the hell do the critics know about ease of use?" I can think of many occasions where they missed the boat - how many times has been said that Apple was on the brink of disappearing? This is one time they were right.

The process by which rulings by an administrative agency are attacked (or allowed) by the judicial system have always piqued my curiosity. Sometimes we see courts making decisions that just make sense and at other times, I cannot fathom the logic. The latest case that brought a smile to my face is a ruling by the US Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit that says:

The insurmountable hurdle facing the FCC in this case is that the agency's general jurisdictional grant does not encompass the regulation of consumer electronics products that can be used for receipt of wire or radio communication when those devices are not engaged in the process of radio or wire transmission...
I had always questioned the FCC's ability to regulate the actual manufacture of items purchased by the general public. (I fail to understand the V-Chip that manufacturers were required to install into video devices like televisions, but that decision was made at a time that I hadn't put much thought into how administrative agencies regulate what we can or cannot do. Also, that whole issue would have been a hard one to debate, politically. Imagine a politician willing to stand up and say "I don't believe that parents should have built in controls over what their children may watch on tv..." You know it would have been spun that way had anyone fought the V-Chip bill [loudly].) The Court affirmed my belief that the FCC didn't have that right. If the court would have ruled that they did indeed have such powers, I was hoping for a mini rebellion from the people who pay attention to such things and typically fight on behalf of consumer rights.
My problem with the Broadcast Flag is two-fold: 1) I don't agree with the powers granted to agency regulators in the US. They are not elected bodies and yet are able to make law. Think about that - you have no control over those who write and pass the laws. Of course, said laws are shrouded behind the guise of being for the benefit of our health, safety and sanity, but the fact is that there is no direct accountability for those who pass the laws by those who must follow them. 2) I simply cannot accept the idea that a law would dictate a characteristic of a product that would prevent me from using it in a similar fashion I have used similar, yet less advanced pruducts - e.g. The VCR. While we have grown accustomed to our laws dictating the way things are built in regards to safety (airbags being mandated in cars, for example), this does not mean that such policy should be expanded to all types of products. It has long been held that consumers have a right to fair use of media we watch, record or purchase. The concept of fair use has been sold to us in the following form: as long as the media is kept soley for personal use, it is ok to transfer, reformat or generally do whatever we want with it. As digital reproduction has become easier and cheaper, media creators have worried about their rights. In my opinion, this has gone from a healthy concern to a type of paranoia. Just as it has become easier to reproduce, digital media, it has also become more feasible to track what we are doing with it. Even better, media companies have decided to fight the tide of easy piracy by simply lobbying to regulate what we are allowed to do; they have gone so far as to believe that our living rooms are fair game. I have noted before my distaste of gratuitous piracy. File sharing and trading copyrighted works has little negative moral implications these days. While I understand the desire to reach into the cookie jar (literally and figuratively), only so much makes sense. The point of this post, however, is that even though there are a lot of people out there doing illegal things, we don't need to heap onto the pile more ways to criminalize (legally) behavior. I still believe that I deserve rights to the things I purchase. I also should continue to be able to manipulate media obtained over the airwaves. The idea that there is a time limitation to my TiVo recordings is absurd. What is the difference between a digital and analog recording? I don't think anyone can come up with a logical difference.
The fact is that the broadcast flag is yet another attempt to build legal and not market driven controls over how we treat media. I'm glad our courts found a way to agree with me (even though they didn't know it).

Owning a small broadband ISP has produced its own series of experiences I never imagined having - and thoughts I never imagined coming from my own person. (For example, I never thought the day would come when I would say 3 Mbit/s is good enough because the cost of increasing said bandwidth is prohibitively expensive.) Reading Verizon hits the gas on fiber campaign (from CNet) started me thinking again about how technology will affect where people live just as the industrial revolution did. I have my doubts it will be as severe as what we have learned about the effects of industrialization - e.g. people moving to the city to specialize in careers instead of being general handymen with no real talent - but many of the choices and opportunities people in my generation have relates to the technology to which they have relatively cheap access. With Verizon's move to bring fiber (enabling a blinding amount of media and data to be efficiently transported to a home or business) to small areas of large communities, it makes me wonder how I can work to bring that type of advanced technology to the neighborhoods I serve. From a business and practical standpoint, delivering the kind of reliability fiber offers without the fiber is a daunting task. Already with our 900MHz and 5.7GHz services, it is difficult to tell what type of RF interference the day is going to bring. Licensed technologies are almost as daunting as trying to use wired technologies. Both require working with bureaucrats and getting licensing to do something that I am doing for more altruistic reasons than the money. Sure, there is some money in providing these types of technologies to people, but nobody wants to pay the real price and you are required - as an operator - to give your business customers the harder end of the bargain. I have a hard time with this type of marketing. I am often inclined at changing midstream and simply marketing to businesses again. I say to myself, however, that the children of our community deserve better. The opportunities that technology brings is staggering if nurtured and used in the correct manner - i.e. learning about your surrounding world instead of looking up porn or playing the latest mindless video game. (Didn't you hear that IM'ing makes you 10 IQ points dumber? [hint sarcasm])
What it boils down to is this: the cost of true broadband services (i.e. DS3) is still prohibitively expensive. I as a second/third tier ISP would love to have that type of connectivity to relay it to our customers (of which, there are very few who actually use much bandwidth). The aggregate cost of supplying ISP's like myself bandwidth is lower than one could imagine due to the fact that so much remains as available excess. Verizon wouldn't be forced to spend billions on ripping up streets. They could spend tens of thousands to provide access to customers like myself who can in turn bring the broadband dream to others.
Hopefully the continued advances in technology will make this possible. If not, we may see another type of industrialization to population movement just because of the internet.

My initial impression of the concept of Podcasting was, “great, now instead of not only inundating my mind with reading material provided to me by the blog and old media world, now I have to get used to another form of media... podcasting. Ugh... the last thing I want is for someone to have to listen to my voice, too...”
Well, two podcasts have proven me completely and utterly wrong: TWiT.tv's podcast with the gang from the real Screen Savers and an unbelievably kick-ass podcast from Vinylpodcast.com. Vinylpodcast.com had a funky fair use song called Lemuria that was simply great - not an everyday song for me, but nonetheless fun to listen to. One of the things you most often hear Larry Lessig point out on his blog and in his books is how media (songs, shows, movies) will eventually fade into the background of culture - making it lost culture - because no one has the rights to provide people access to it. It is great to see that the twit gang is also paying attention to such issues by releasing their content under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike copyright. It also looks like many others offering up their own podcasts are following along in the same grain. It really is amazing what the technology of the internet is bringing to our culture. It lightens my heart to think that there remains an avenue to defeat the inevitableness of government oppression vis a vis micromanagement laws.
While I don't see myself subscribing to too many podcasts, there are certainly those which will have caught my attention. (Also, if you are looking for a good podcast client for the Mac, take a look at ipodderx.com.)

I'm currently stuck in a conundrum. After a fairly long brouhaha over at OpenBSD regarding Adaptec's unwillingness to release proper documentation for their hardware so that developers may legally and openly work on stable drivers for their SATA raid cards (among others), I realized that I needed to make a choice about what my companies were going to do with regards to moving to Free Software. When I say free, I mean that people are allowed to do what they wish with the software: use it, modify it, look at the source, steal it, copy it, burn it, rip it, spit on it, put proprietary changes in it, etc. Free as in free. This is an effort that will literally take years. I cannot make the necessary changes in our office immediately because of the productivity related impact it would have on our organizations. There is also the reality that we will be forced to continue to use non-free software to integrate with our customers. Where I can, however, I have decided that we are going to use free software. One situation involves our email servers. For years, I have been happily using Dan Bernstein's qmail. I even translated a FreeBSD related howto a few years ago, so that others could get it up and running as easily as I after reading Oliver Lehmann's original howto. The fact is, however, that Dan's licensing terms are not free. The most striking issue I have is:

My understanding of this clause is that I cannot modify qmail source and distribute it without Dan's approval. Fine. That choice is within his rights and I respect that. But, I don't like it. This has led to a qmail installation that requires patch upon patch upon patch to achieve deal with many issues I now have with my email server. I want smtp-auth, smtp-tls/ssl, larger queues, integrated pop3 & imap services, virus scanning, spam scanning, etc. Under no circumstances do I think Dan is responsible for providing what I want, but I would like others or myself to be able to do so. Qmail has become a monster - if you wish to use it like many modern mail systems. I would be happy if someone were allowed to distribute such a beast without limitations. Free does not mean asking permission to change.
So, over the next two or so years (I figure it will take that long), I will start to move away from qmail to something like postfix - although, I still haven't figured out how free the IBM public license is, but at quick glance, it at least allows things that Dan's license doesn't - for example, modification and distribution without permission. Due to my familiarity with courier-imap, I'll probably continue to use it - even with my unrest over the GPL. The GPL is decidedly not free. It requires any changes be given back to the open source community for free. While I like the concept, I like free better.
I know that pragmatism will prevail in cases where the work needed will overshadow the desire for free software. I feel the difference between now and before, though, is that in every instance, where I need to make a decision, I will be searching far and wide for software that is free. This is not something I put much thought into before - unless I had the choice between paying and not paying. Thanks de Raadt and OpenBSD for opening my eyes.