(Submitted as a story on 12/31/2006)

If you've gone to a big-box store and purchased a wireless card recently, you might have had some trouble getting it to work under Linux, or any non-Windows OS for that matter. One reason for this is that more and more manufacturers are producing hardware that are useless without proprietary firmware. While these new designs allow for lower parts counts and thus lower cost, it presents a serious problem for F/OSS software because it can sometimes guarantee no out-of-the-box compatibility. Jem Matzan has produced a detailed article, "The battle for wireless network drivers," on the subject, including interviews with manufacturers' representatives and OS developers, including Theo de Raadt. The bottom line? In general, Asian hardware manufacturers were far more responsive and liberal about firmware than U.S. manufacturers (Intel included). Look for more firmware issues in the future, as not only wireless hardware, but regular wired Ethernet cards, take the driver-loaded firmware approach.

ArsTechnica recently posted an interesting article discussing the experiences of several Chicago suburbs experiencing the first waves of telco-delivered next-gen broadband (FTTN) deployments.

On one hand, traditional telecommunications carriers like AT&T want to use their existing right-of-way agreements and "last mile" copper wiring to offer 20Mb data service, which would include the magic trifecta of voice, data, and video, to residential customers' homes. But facing them is a range of challenges, including the homeowners themselves, with local municipal governments in tow; that's in addition to the resistance you'd expect from existing cable TV franchises. Customers dislike the large fiber/copper interface boxes that must be deposited around neighborhoods in order to provide the service, and are worried that telcos will use their status as "data services" to avoid traditional franchise agreements that require whole-town build-outs, similar to what cable companies had to do in the 1980s.

The result is what you'd expect: lawsuits. The municipal governments are stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place: if they allow the telcos to go ahead with their (generally undisclosed, trade-secret) plans, they'll be sued by the cablecos for not keeping the playing field level; if they block the telcos, they'll be sued for not allowing "network upgrades." Since there are currently no court rulings or Federal laws to act as guides, it's anyone's guess as to which way it will turn out.

As someone who just wants a fast, cheap data pipe, it's a difficult issue to take sides on. It's obvious that the U.S. regulatory and competitive climate is poisonous, as evidenced by the lack of broadband options here, compared to other countries with similar population densities. What's not obvious is whether letting the telcos deploy according to their own schedules is best, or whether municipal governments should be allowed to force them to build-out, deploying service to areas that may not be as immediately profitable. The telcos are quick to threaten that the latter will cause the deployment of the services to be aborted entirely, while others have speculated that including low-income areas in next-generation deployments might help to keep prices down later, benefiting everyone.

According to this Engadget article a Chinese company, the Jiangsu Menglong Science and Technology Company, has produced a 1600 yuan ($203 USD) Internet PC. The system runs on a "750MHz 64-bit homegrown Godson IIE chip" rather than an Intel or AMD part, and includes 256MB RAM and a 40GB hard drive. Based on promotional photos, it seems to run some form of Linux as an OS. Prices are exclusive of a keyboard and monitor; you'll have to bring your own for now. Also reported by Agence France Presse, via PhysOrg: the Godson chip "was produced by the Institute of Computer Technology under the state-run China Academy of Sciences as part of a project to lower computer costs in China."

(Submitted as a story on 11/21/2006.)

The U.S.-based anti-drunk-driving group Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) has announced its new campaign this week, which prominently features technological measures against drunk driving. In particular, MADD is planning a nationwide call for wider use of "ignition interlocks," devices which require a driver to blow into a Breathalyzer in order to start their car, for all convicted drunk drivers and not just repeat offenders. However, the group sees this as only the first stage in a wider plan, which would eventually make Breathalyzer-like devices standard equipment in all U.S. automobiles. According to the N.Y. Times article: "Ms. Ferguson said the most promising technologies would work automatically, like air bags." Automatic, mandatory alcohol sensing has received support from the Governors Highway Safety Association, whose chairman was quoted as saying "When 40 percent of all our crashes are alcohol-involved, I don't think it's going to be that difficult of a sell."

I've heard quite a bit about frightening memes lately, particularly neo-conservative astroturfing. It's become pervasive enough that Occam's Razor tells me that it can't be wholly astroturf, it must be a successful meme.

I think of myself as mostly immune to memes. By that I mean, it takes more than a catchy slogan or a bit of thought to make me adopt a meme. I'm immune to advertising, peer pressure, etc. And of course I realize it's impossible to be completely immune and still remain human and relevant.

And yet, far too many people aren't even close. I have a good friend who is one of the smartest people I know, and yet he has at least a couple of memes he's accepted and never questioned thoroughly. He thinks very well about them, too, builds on them, and his beliefs are self-consistent, but choosing that memeplex over another is, as Spock would put it, "not logical."

What we need is a powerful immunizing meme. A meme that is more than a fad, that is potent enough to spread as easily as MySpace or emo/anti-emo, but which carries a payload that immunizes against other, similar memes. A meme that tells you to stand up and think for yourself, and to fight for your beliefs, never relax and stop caring.

With people actually thinking for themselves, it should be much easier to accomplish most political goals I share with most people reading this. For instance, a demand for verified voting would be much easier with people actually thinking -- we know they at least claim to care about democracy. Ditto to a boycott of high def media (DRM), a mass exodus from Windows where possible, or voting for the candidate who's actually an honest man, instead of the one who has the most corporations to finance his campaign.

In fact, I think much of my political beliefs can be distilled to a simple and effective meme, but I'm thinking of this like democracy. The original reasons for any democracy could've been solved with a monarchy -- with the American Revolution, we could've done away with the tea tax, stamp act, etc, and still made George Washington King, instead of President. But we chose democracy to make it last, based on the theory (if I may theorize) that if the new government had a flaw, or developed one, democracy would correct it without the need for another revolution.

Same for memes -- if we, as a species, can become fundamentally resistant to being so easily subverted by advertising, politics, astroturfing, and dishonest memes, and develop a habit of thinking for ourselves, and questioning our every assumption, then we get an automatic benefit: If any aspect of our government or society has a flaw, we will correct it, without the need for a massive grassroots, campaign, mememetic engineering, whatever. If the flaw is as blindingly obvious as, say, Diebold, then we will independantly and automatically reject it, Stand-Alone Complex style.

Oh, it won't eliminate the need for these things. People do disagree, so we will need to construct memes or campaigns for, say, Linux vs Windows. Some of you will be on one side, some on another side, each calling the other a fanboy, and that's ok. But I would much prefer an intelligent dialogue than the willful ignorance of the majority.

That is the ultimate goal here: Eliminate ignorant apathy. By the time young John Doe buys his first gas-guzzler, he should be making a definite statement that he doesn't care about the environment. He should not simply buy it by default because he didn't know about hybrid cars. By the time Jane Doe buys her first Dell, she should either be making the statement "I like/need Windows and don't mind supporting MS" or "This is the best value I can get for this kind of hardware." She should not be buying it by default, because Dell advertising has given her a subconscious assumption of "computer==dell". Nothing done by default, or if you do, make sure it's consciously by default: I got the default Ramen because it's not worth my time to choose Ramen flavors, when they taste so much alike.

Comments! I want to know if this can work!

According to several news sources, Verizon has dropped its controversial new fee that it had planned to add onto DSL accounts, in place of the recently-removed FCC fee. The move is an apparent win for many irate customers, who saw a potential cost savings disappear into what was almost universally felt to be a cost increase. The move comes as Verizon was taking critcism not only from disgrundled customers and the press, but from the FCC itself.

Now, if they could only get rid of those "Regulatory Compliance Fees" that the telcos and cellular providers are somehow exempt from including in their advertised prices...why is any 'fee' not assessed by the government considered anything but part of the price of the service?

As reported by Ars Technica and the Washington Post, two hackers have found an exploitable vulnerability in the wireless drivers used by Apple's MacBook. Machines are vulnerable if they have wireless enabled and are set to connect to any available wireless network, fairly close to their default state, and the exploit allows an attacker to gain "total access" -- apparently a remote root. Although the demo, performed via video at the BlackHat conference, takes aim at what one of the hackers calls the "Mac userbase aura of smugness on security," Windows users shouldn't get too smug themselves: according to the Post article, "the two have found at least two similar flaws in device drivers for wireless cards either designed for or embedded in machines running the Windows OS." Ultimately, it may be the attacks against embedded devices which are the most threatening, since those devices are the hardest to upgrade. Currently there have not been any reports of this vulnerability 'in the wild.'

If I've added you as one of my foes, it means one of three things:

1) You're a flaming liberal, and I don't want to waste my time reading your drivel. Grow up, learn how the world and the people in it really work, and become a conservative.
2) You're a self-centered nerd who says things like "I don't like Microsoft, so I don't buy their products, so they will go out of business." Just because you are/are not doing something, Sparky, doesn't mean it's going to affect anyone else. One anecdote does not a data set make.
3) Ur speling and, like, grammar are just, like, bad, and stuff. Go read a basic book on English grammar, so you can learn when to use who and whom, when not to use "you and I" instead of "you and me", and what an infinitive is and why it's so important not to split them.

If you want to know which one of the three landed you on my Foes list, just email me (cor bettw at ya hoo dot com). I promise I won't add your email address to every porn spam page I come across.

I haven't been here since the beginning, but at 1060 comments, it's really time for me to explore a bit more about Slashdot, such as the social networking bit.

Looking over my own stats, I only have one friend, and I can't remember when I added them. I've also got no foes. I guess I never thought it was worth it to add trolls to that list.

I do have the Profanity Blacklist as a freak, and have for a long time -- what a fucking surprise, that!

What seemed weird to me was, I have no other freaks, and I do have five fans. Seems odd -- either I've been doing pretty well, or I've just kept my head down. I know others have a long list of freaks. I've been looking at that list to try and find some insight as to why these people picked me, and whether I should add them.

There's a very large part of me that wants to ignore the whole thing, and call it something only MySpacers would do, but looking through some of these people, I do find interesting discussions I'd have missed otherwise. I guess it's something to do when I feel like reading Slashdot, but there've been no updates.

Woah. Maybe I'm an addict.

Anyway, no particular point to this exercise, but I've left comments enabled. Drop me a note. And no, this will not be a weblog, but until I decide to get something like that set up, I may as well post Slashdot-related rantings on Slashdot.

As reported by Bloomberg and others, DaimlerChrylser's SmartCar may soon be coming to the U.S.. The iconic vehicle weighs 1,609 pounds, has a 50-HP gasoline engine, and gets approximately 52 MPG. Its small size have made it popular in some urban European areas, and Chrysler is betting that the inreasing price of gas will make U.S. consumers receptive to the idea of a small, efficient urban ride. No word on safety, although the idea of being struck by an H2 at highway speeds while riding in one of these is unsettling, to say the least.

A British eBay user known only as "spikytom," frustrated when a laptop he bought didn't work or match the advertised specs, took revenge on the seller when he created a website and posted information allegedly taken off of the computer's improperly wiped hard drive. Included were a number of embarrassing pictures, plus scans of the seller's passport, and excerpts from his resume. The website received national attention in the U.K., and the seller was quoted as describing his life as "a living hell." Opinions on the site seem to be mixed: while most of us who have used eBay for any length of time have ended up on the wrong end of a shady deal, this seems distressingly close to extortion, since the buyer is asking for his money back in exchange for removing the page.

Oscar Wilde once wrote "you cannot reason a man out of a position he has not reasoned himself into", and so I did not respond this last Saturday when I was privy to a conversation that desperately begged for a response. Perhaps I should have; but in the end, I wasn't convinced that it would result in anything positive.

There were 5 or 6 of us gathered around when conversation turned to politics. This particular group of men leans very conservative, so I left my centrist self to listen. But the subject of liberal universities and left-wing nutjob professors arose. That led directly into a condemnation of intellectuals in general. They were seen as thinkers at the expense of doers. They were leeches, thinking themselves so smart; but providing little benefit to society. They pontificated arrogantly to the hard-working citizens who built this country. This went on ad nauseum.

It offended me greatly for a number of reasons. First, there was bit of the strawman in how they related intellectuals to liberal nutjobs. It's a strawman argument useful for dismissing said intellectuals. It's a method of minimizing them and their opinions. It's a mechanism for elevating one's opinion to "the right opinion" when there is conflict.

The other thing that struck me was the willfull ignorance of the historical contributions to our society of the "intellectuals". It's quaint and uplifting to our pride to say that this country was built on the backs of the American worker; but it's not the complete story.

Intellectuals wrote the Declaration of Independence.
Intellectuals wrote the Articles of Confederation.
Intellectuals argued for months throughout the constitutional convention, hashing out mechanisms and political philosophies that they pulled from political studies and histories written by men none of us now know from memory. These were smart men. They were studious.
The intellectuals spilled their blood alongside of the farmer and the trapper in the war. They implemented the strategies that allowed us to defeat the British. Who can forget Nathan Hale's statement that "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country" or Patrick Henry's challenge to "Give me liberty or give me death!"?

It was intellectuals who cured Polio
It was intellectuals who sparked the industrial revolution
It was intellectuals who took us to the moon
It was intellectuals who developed the exotic composites and materials that protect our troops
It was intellectuals who developed the training that make our military the strongest and the smartest in the world
It was intellectuals who developed our incredibly safe cars with their airbags, anti-lock brakes and crumple-zones
It was intellectuals who designed the computers that make so many of our other accomplishments possible

It will be the intellectuals who one day cure cancer and aids.

T.J. Watson, the founder of IBM gave his employees notepads on which he had printed "Think". This wonderful little laptop I'm typing this from is named after those "Think" pads.

When intellect becomes a bad word in this country, we have seen the beginning of the end of our strength, our elevated society, and of our very character.

Work hard. Think hard. Make us better.

Creative Labs, maker of the Zen line of digital audio players, has filed suit against Apple Computer, and is seeking an injunction to block sales of iPods, saying that the machines' user interface violates a 2005 patent held by Creative: "Automatic Hierarchical Categorization of Music by Metadata," (U.S. Patent No. 6,928,433). The patent was filed in 2001 and covers "A method, performed by software...of a portable music playback device, that automatically files tracks according to hierarchical structure of categories to organize tracks in a logical order."

As Ars Technica and others have reported, Microsoft is rolling out, via Windows Update, a new version of its Windows Genuine Advantage system to combat piracy.

The software, which is an optional install (it can be declined by not accepting the EULA) checks the validity of a user's copy of Windows and pops up an on-screen message warning that the copy may be "counterfeit" if the number doesn't check out. The message is displayed both via a system-tray alert icon, and a dialog box which pops up while the computer is in use. After 14 days of inaction, the message will pop up hourly. One article reported that according to Microsoft, once installed, the notification system is not removeable.

The new version has been rolled out to Windows users in Australia, New Zealand, and a limited number of users in the U.S., with a wider rollout expected in time.

Sources:
TechCentral
Geek.com
and of course, Ars Technica.

Voice of America news, among other sources, is reporting that Research In Motion, makers of the BlackBerry mobile email device, has settled its ongoing 2001 patent dispute lawsuit with US-based NTP, Inc., to the tune of $612.5 million USD. The settlement "settles all claims" between the two companies, and prevents either a shutdown of the BlackBerry service, or the need for RIM to roll out a potentially problematic workaround for the disputed features. The settlement comes after all of NTP's patents had been rejected by the US Patent and Trademark Office, although this did officially did not impact the case. The settlement may come as a disappointment to those who have lauded RIM for standing up to what has been called an abusive use of junk patents.