Going from Windows XP to Ubuntu 10.04 the first time was pretty easy; I just used UNetbootin and followed the instructions with little fuss.

But after adding some applications that locked up the computer shortly before displaying the login screen — effectively locking me out of the system — I didn’t know how to roll back and reinstall Ubuntu. Most instructions relied on being able to boot from a Live CD to fix things, and obviously I didn’t have that option.

“Netboot Install From Internet” HOWTO wiki page had my answer. I was able to (1) use a different computer to download some key files to a USB stick, (2) transfer the files from the USB stick to the /boot directory using the rudimentary command line available from initrd, (3) reboot and use the grub command line to initiate the netboot installation.

Earlier in the evening, I also tried a more extreme solution with a friend — we pulled the hard drive from the Fujitsu, put it into a Dell machine that could boot from a USB stick, and installed the basic, command-line only Ubuntu system that way.

There are options if you don’t have a system with bootable media. Good luck!

Learn more about this video and support EFF!

I didn’t quite expect that I would be allowed to watch the DVD, but I also wasn’t counting on being given the option to change my computer’s region code. Not that this makes me happy — region codes are just another bullshit way that Hollywood tries to control culture in the name of profit.

Goofing off at a CC Salon last year.

Judging from the Upcoming.org page, this CC Salon looks like it’ll be well-attended. If you’re in town, join for drinks, music, and some presentations on citizen journalism from Wikinews (community-written news) and Spot.us (community-funded reporting). It starts at 7pm!

(Photo of Detalle de la conexión al MacBook by iBuffet under a Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution-ShareAlike License.)

What does this mean? Well, High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) is an insidious form of DRM that prevents video sources from transmitting to non-compliant receivers. Conventionally speaking, it was designed so that new generations of disc players would only output to HDCP-compliant TVs and projectors — and not a DVR, computer, or general-purpose recording device.

To my limited knowledge, it works by encrypting the video coming out of the device’s port, then having the devices “know” what’s on the other end of the cable. If the player doesn’t “recognize” the device that’s displaying the movie, then the player stops*. (In the screenshot in the Ars article, the MacBook error message tells the user: “This movie cannot be played because a display that is not authorized to play protected movies is connected.”)

It’s extremely vexing to see Apple implementing DRM on its display ports — and it’s pushing me even further away from choosing an Apple laptop as my next computer.

* Depending on the devices being used, the player may instead simply lower the quality of the image, completely ignoring your hard-earned dollars of investment in “high definition.”

You can find some instructions on the Create Digital Music blog.

While Lessig did a fantastic job of drawing the audience to the inevitable necessity of making a serious effort to reform Congress, the Change Congress movement itself is pretty simple. Loosely, the campaign will challenge candidates for office to brand themselves with Change Congress badges on the basis of which three reforms they support, specifically:

1. refusing money from lobbyists or political action committees (PACs)
2. abolishing earmarks
3. endorsing public financing for campaigns

Simply, it’s a campaign to unite disparate reform movements through common branding, and it’s simple enough to get some traction.

But Lessig also mentioned some things that I hadn’t heard before — a piece of the puzzle he described as additional “layers”. The branding is the first layer, which is to be supported by a second “carrot” layer and a third “stick” layer.

The carrot is conventional enough — a pledge of funds for candidates that take up one, two, or all reforms as part of their campaign.

The stick, however, is a bit more unconventional and interesting. People have rightfully challenged the Change Congress badge idea at the outset — why would a campaign pay any attention to these badges and/or why would anyone pay attention to whether or not the candidate is badged? Lessig posits that people should “escalate the cost of running without a badge” by running themselves. When candidates ignore the campaign and avoid taking positions on those reforms, regular citizens can and should run as single-issue candidates, bringing the issue to the surface.

It’s interesting and hard to pooh-pooh, frankly, because of technology. One observation is that small communities really are engaging in a broader discourse through blogging, tagging, and commenting; another is that local media are paying more attention “downward” to their readers and local constituents because they provide valuable resources in the form of news leads, online comments and flamewars, and pageviews. Imagine housewives, programmers, sysadmins, grandpas, high school kids, having some baked-in media juice (and maybe even some money) thanks to a national “Change Congress” campaign…? It doesn’t seem that far-fetched and most of all — it sounds pretty fun.

Stay tuned — I’ll try to update with audio and/or video when it’s posted.

Come to San Diego and join EFF in honoring Mitchell Baker and the Mozilla Foundation, Michael Geist, and Mark Klein at the 17th annual Pioneer Awards! Michael Robertson, the Founder and CEO of MP3.com, Linspire, MP3tunes, and Gizmo5, will keynote the ceremony with his talk: “What to Expect When You’re Expecting… To Be Sued”.

Awarded every year since 1991, the Pioneer Awards recognize leaders who are extending freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier. This year, the Pioneer Awards ceremony will be held in conjunction with ETech at the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina on Tuesday March 4th, 2008. The event begins at 7:15 p.m. and is open to the public.

Tickets to the Pioneer Awards ceremony and Michael Robertson’s keynote address are $35. You can buy your ticket in advance at:
http://secure.eff.org/pioneerfundraiser

TCHO is the Platinum Sponsor for the 2008 Pioneer Awards ceremony. Founded by Wired co-founder Louis Rossetto and legendary chocolatier and former technologist Timothy Childs, TCHO is “a new chocolate company for a new generation of chocolate enthusiasts.” TCHO will sample a “beta release” of their dark chocolate during the awards ceremony. Attendees are invited to taste two different formulas and vote for a favorite. Feedback directly influences the formula used for the national release bar. Learn more about TCHO at:
http://www.tcho.com

Bronze sponsors of the 2008 Pioneer Awards ceremony include: MOG, Three Rings, JibJab, Atomic PR, Barracuda Networks.

For more information about the 2008 Pioneer Awards:
http://www.eff.org/awards/pioneer

For the Upcoming.org page:
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/441454/

A year later, and I’m seeing the same shtick employed in high-profile ad campaigns for gadgets and tech toys. Commericals for Sirius Satellite Radio, the LG Voyager from Verizon, and an advertisement for AT&T featuring domino-ing flat screens all seem to crib heavily from those earlier web videos.

The dean of students said he saw two girls kissing. He checked the surveillance tape then shared what he saw with the parents of one of the girls. They then pulled her out of school, which then pulled the peninsula school district into a big controversy.

The TV station brought the issue home to Kentucky, because a number of schools in the county, from elementary school to high school, have surveillance cameras.

The situation serves as a good example of what is inevitable in a surveillance culture—everyone gets trapped by what the camera sees. Look at the issue from the surface and there’s an obvious question: Was the dean merely scandalized by seeing what he interpreted as “deviant” behavior? Would he have made the same parental report upon seeing a young man and a young woman kissing? What does it mean about him, (and more significantly, the level of tolerance in our culture) if he’s acted upon viewing the homosexual act and not the heterosexual act?

But play with some variables, and there are other troubling questions raised by the surveillance. What if the dean fiercely wanted to keep it a secret, but feared retribution should someone later realize that he had failed to say anything to the parents? The video evidence could reveal his inaction; it could become a mark on his record. Imagine another extreme—what if he was deeply religious and saw this as a way to punish the girls, less for violating school policy, and more as a way of asserting his morality? Or perhaps a more ambiguous situation—he just saw it has his duty to report it to the parents and is now shamed and sorry that he disrupted the lives of these students in a way that he will always regret. There is a great deal about what happened that day that just plain feels icky.

That’s the problem with a surveillance culture. Surely, one benefit of surveillance is greater knowledge, but the knowledge that it imparts doesn’t come with guidance on what to do with it. Secrets allow people to safely explore the world around them, make mistakes, and learn. But with constant surveillance of any environs, that exploration can be tragically denied, to the eventual detriment of everyone but the thoughtless camera.

My three observations about the iPhone:

1. It’s not an open platform and there’s no development kit (yet). For now, Apple is the only company that can make applications for the iPhone, apart from what developers can make work from a web browser. But what makes a computer great is the ability to freely utilize its storage ability and processing power to solve problems. In general, Apple can be trusted to provide good, flexible solutions (You can customize fields in Address Book, for example), but how much can Apple afford to program to the idiosyncratic needs of bloggers, photographers, DJs, stock traders, teachers, and students? An open platform is the way to allow unique solutions and people-powered innovation to come to light. Solutions require innovation, innovation demands creativity, and creativity is fostered by openness. Apple is enlightened enough to know this, but they unfortunately realize that they would be undercutting their own short-term revenue potential and business relationships with the wireless carriers if they opened the iPhone up for public development.
2. No tactile feedback. I’m sure you can eventually learn how to type without looking at the “screenboard,” but please don’t argue that the learning curve isn’t going to be significantly higher than a device with a dedicated, physical input component.
3. AT&T? For now, you can only get the iPhone by signing up with one carrier for two freakin’ years. And have you seen any of this or that?

Meanwhile, the leading-edge of the revolution in phones is quietly bubbling up in the shadow of the almighty iPhone. Nokia recently announced the stateside availability of the E61i, a open-platform phone running on Symbian. You can buy it unlocked from Dell. And then there’s the Neo1973, being offered via Internet order on July 9th, running the open-source, Linux-based OpenMoko.

Computers got “big” when everyone had a chance to play. Isn’t it time we got to have the same fun over our handheld devices?

Without making a moral judgment, I will say that if the bill passes, I can see it pushing consumers to the Internet in droves. People are curious—the youth especially. When TV ceases to bring life to the world that exists on the boundaries of their experiences, the consumers will lose interest and new generations will cease to pick up the TV habit. (Perhaps better said as, “The consumers have already lost interest and new generations haven’t picked up the TV habit.”)

At this juncture, the “consumer choice” that the bill proposes is the choice to narrow programming, rather than expand it. Unfortunately, in an age of unprecedented choice in entertainment, I can’t see it providing many long-term benefits to consumers, other than hastening their collective migration to other entertainment options.

Saletan ultimately cites evidence that suggests that women may choose to eliminate periods not because of physical discomfort but because of social pressure—that periods are seen as a weakness and a nuisance by males (i.e. boyfriends) and masculine institutions (i.e. corporate jobs). And thus, Lybrel may simply become another expression of control over women. Saletan closes with the line, “I’m glad women are free to take Lybrel. I hope, in the future, they’ll also feel free not to.”

The whole article is great and you can read it here on Slate.