http://phandroid.com/2010/05/10/android-surpasses-the-iphone-in-the-united-states/

*With new tablet device, Apple’s Steve Jobs pushes unprecedented
extension of DRM to a new class of general purpose computers*

Please sign our petition to Steve Jobs at:
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/ipad

SAN FRANCISCO, California, USA — Wednesday, January 27, 2010 — As
Steve Jobs and Apple prepared to announce their new tablet device,
activists opposed to Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) from the
group Defective by Design were on hand to draw the media’s attention to
the increasing restrictions that Apple is placing on general purpose
computers. The group set up “Apple Restriction Zones” along the
approaches to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco,
informing journalists of the rights they would have to give up to Apple
before proceeding inside.

(images from the action http://i.imgur.com/nUtZK.jpg,
http://i.imgur.com/0wpvY.jpg, http://i.imgur.com/iL2vT.jpg)

DRM is used by Apple to restrict users’ freedom in a variety of ways,
including blocking installation of software that comes from anywhere
except the official Application Store, and regulating every use of
movies downloaded from iTunes. Apple furthermore claims that
circumventing these restrictions is a criminal offense, even for
purposes that are permitted by copyright law.

Organizing the protest, Free Software Foundation (FSF) operations
manager John Sullivan said, “Our Defective by Design campaign has a
successful history of targeting Apple over its DRM policies. We
organized actions and protests targeting iTunes music DRM outside Apple
stores, and under the pressure Steve Jobs dropped DRM on music. We’re
here today to send the same message about the other restrictions Apple
is imposing on software, ebooks, and movies. If Jobs and Apple are
actually committed to creativity, freedom, and individuality, they
should prove it by eliminating the restrictions that make creativity and
freedom illegal.”

The group is asking citizens to sign a petition calling on Steve Jobs to
remove DRM from Apple devices. The petition can be found at:
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/ipad

“Attention needs to be paid to the computing infrastructure our society
is becoming dependent upon. This past year, we have seen how human
rights and democracy protesters can have the technology they use turned
against them by the corporations who supply the products and services
they rely on. Your computer should be yours to control. By imposing such
restrictions on users, Steve Jobs is building a legacy that endangers
our freedom for his profits,” said FSF executive director Peter Brown.

Other critics of DRM have asserted that Apple is not responsible, and it
is the publishers insisting on the restrictions. However, on the iPhone
and its new tablet, Apple does not provide publishers any way to opt out
of the restrictions — even free software and free culture authors who
want to give legal permission for users to share their works.

“This is a huge step backward in the history of computing,” said FSF’s
Holmes Wilson, “If the first personal computers required permission from
the manufacturer for each new program or new feature, the history of
computing would be as dismally totalitarian as the milieu in Apple’s
famous Super Bowl ad.”

### About the Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting
computer users’ right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute
computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as
in freedom) software — particularly the GNU operating system and its
GNU/Linux variants — and free documentation for free software. The FSF
also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of
freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites, located at fsf.org
and gnu.org, are an important source of information about GNU/Linux.
Donations to support the FSF’s work can be made at
http://donate.fsf.org. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.

Anyway, I am not much of a people person and was going to be travelling by myself so I asked Kami if she wanted to go with me.  Despite her fear of flying she agreed that it would be fun.  We talked to Jake and Carolyn and they agreed to watch the kids for us for 5 days.  We owe them soooo much.

It was really nice to get away for a few days.  We left on Sunday morning, flew to Seattle on a small turboprop, then to Chicago and then to Baltimore.  From there we drove a rental car to Cambridge, about 2 hours away.  It was 1:00am EDT by the time we got to the hotel.

Monday and Tuesday I had meetings until 5 or so.  Kami drove around the town and did some writing.  You can read about it on her blog.  After my meetings we went out and got some food and then back to the hotel to hang out.  Wednesday was a short day so we had some time to see the few sites around the area.

Thursday we drove back to Baltimore and began the trek home.  This time we flew to Denver and then to Spokane so that was very nice.  We also got home by 9:00.  We really missed the kids.  They seemed to have quite a good time with their Aunt and Uncle.  I’m so glad we could work this out.  Thanks Jake and Carolyn.

Prerequisits

1. A google account so you can use google talk.  A gmail account should already be set up for that.
2. An account on my micro blog at micro.notsopc.com
3. An IM client.  I use Pidgin for mine since it supports all of the IM services (including google talk.

Steps

1. Open Pidgin
2. Setup your google talk account
3. Add update@notsopc.com as a buddy to your account.
4. Log in to your account on micro.notsopc.com
5. Click Settings
6. Click IM
7. Enter your google talk user name
8. Click Add
9. After a minute or so you should get a message from update@notsopc.com with a link.  Follow the link

That should be all.  You should be able to send a message to update@notsopc.com and have it show up in your profile on the site.

So you might be wondering what microblogging is.  It is kind of a weird concept.  It is a cross between email and Instant Messaging.  You make short entries about anything.  What you are doing or thinking, or whatever.  So people can subscribe to your posts and see what you are up to.  It’s kinda cool. There are times that I don’t want to write an entire blog post but want to rant about something or post something small that is going on that I want to share.

On Monday in that same podcast, they interviewed the founder of a different service called identi.ca.  I started using that yesterday.  My profile is identi.ca/discostu.  I also installed the server software on my own site.  I’ll probably be using that one primarily now.  It is open source software so I will probably attempt to make some changes and improve the service.  Sign up if you are interested.  micro.notsopc.com

I am very particular about a few things.  Email happens to be one that I am a bit more vocal about, well at least vocal to Kevin at work.  I gripe to him about things that people do when composing e-mail messages.  I’m sure he’s sick of it.  Anyway here are a couple of things that really get my goat.

1. Subject lines – The subject line is just that, the subject.  It should contain a very general synopsis of the content of the e-mail.  It should be short and to the point.  It should NOT be blank.  It should NOT be the first line of the the body of the message unless that first line is also included in the body.  For example:

To: foo@bar.com

Subject: It is time…

Body: to go to work.

I don’t want to have to re-read the subject to figure out the first part of the sentence and no one else should either.

2. Post Scripts.  Adding a P.S. to the end of an e-mail message is ridiculous.  From my understanding the Post Script was when you finished writing a letter or some other correspondence and you remembered something you forgot to put in the main body.  You would write P.S. at the bottom and write your thought.  If you are composing an e-mail you can obviously just move the little cursor back to the main body and add the thought there.

There you go.

I think I want to focus on the uplifting side of it since the focus in General Conference is usually on the evils of the internet.  Not that I will avoid that completely but I think a lot of people are scared of the technology and expect to be bombarded with pornography the instant they open a web browser.

An example of this is, this last week an elderly woman in the Ward called me to see if I could setup her internet and and new computer.  She’s been asking me for a few weeks but things have been pretty hectic lately with the play and such.  Anyway, she called and I thought I better just go and do it.  So I went and got her all connected.  Her first question when I was done was.  “This will block all the pornography, right?”  I politely told her that it would not and that you would typically buy some other software if you wanted to do that.  She was mostly concerned about her teenage granddaughter.  I told her to just not let her use the computer alone.  I also showed her Google and let her know that they do a pretty good job of filtering results so you don’t accidentally find things you shouldn’t.

I wouldn’t mind any other ideas you might have that I might bring up.

openid.net – Official site
openid.org – Get your own Open ID
openiddirectory.com – Sites using Open IDs