Coffs Ex-Services Computer Club

As Paul mentioned at our last meeting, the ABC has followed the BBC in crippling their programs with Digital Restrictions Management. The ABC, which has until recently been pretty good at digital distribution, is now selling us copies of programs we already paid for in a form which restricts how we can use these recordings.

Purchasing and viewing these videos requires the "integrated ABC Shop Media Player and its Downloads Manager", which only works on Windows and Internet Explorer. The videos cannot be played on any other software or device. The software is proprietary, so you have no way of knowing what it is actually doing, but among the features the manufacturer boasts of are:

• "Peer assisted content delivery technology". That is, P2P file-sharing technology like BitTorrent, only in this case the sharing is not under your control, and you can't opt out. The ABC Shop's customers are paying to receive this data, but they are not necessarily receiving the data from the ABC Shop; more likely from other ABC Shop customers. You are paying the ABC Shop for a service, even though you are just as much the provider of that service as they are.
• "PDF and Windows Media file control features." You don't have control over the files you pay for, the ABC Shop does. You may have paid for it, but they still own it.
• "A rich reporting and analytics tool that shows downloads as well as advanced metrics such as who has viewed which content, when, and for how long." Big Brother is watching you watching your videos.
  

DefectiveByDesign.org has the full story, and advice on what you can do about it.

For the second time, I've sent an email to the IT manager of the club enquiring about the possible causes and solutions for the recurring network connectivity outages in the club board room, and for the second time I've received no reply. (Being familiar with the level of in-house technological expertise at the Ex-Services Club, perhaps I should have sent a fax, or a telegram.)

So I thought that unless we prepare to do something at this meeting that doesn't require Internet access, we will probably be wasting our time, and this made me think of the many ways that computers can facilitate time-wasting. I've talked about this before, but I've recently aquired a few new favourites:

• Aisleriot 
• Crack Attack
• Gweled
• GNOME Sudoku
• and an old, but recurring favourite: Battle for Wesnoth

What are your favourite computer-related activities for those times when you really should be doing something more important?

Just to show I wasn't kidding at our last meeting when I said VirtualBox runs just about any operating system from within just about any operating system, here's a short video demonstration of VirtualBox running OpenSolaris and Windows on a Mac from the MacWorld video blog.

Usual late notice again this month. Usual apologies.

As always, we'll be in the board room of the Coffs Ex-Services Club, and as always who knows what will happen? I can guarantee at least a moderate amount of genial chat about computer-related topics; anything else is up to the whims of the fates, and that's part of the fun.

Software Freedom Day is coming up in a month, and as I've been saying all year, Allison and I aren't going to have the time to organise an event this year, but we would certainly to our best to contribute to anything anybody else wanted to organise. So far nobody's stepped forward, but it's still not too late. Take a look at what some of the other SFD teams around the world are doing, and if you have a brilliant idea for spreading free software goodness amongst the people of Coffs Harbour, all it takes is a little time and commitment to make it happen.

Matthew.

The big news of the week is Bill Gates leaving his day job at Microsoft (but retaining his office to reassure Microsoft shareholders), and the disappearence of Windows XP from retail shelves. It's a time for reminiscences, retrospectives, getting teary over old photographs, and speculation about the future. I think it might be appropriate to do some of these things ourselves at our next meeting (7:00pm Wednesday, 2nd July,  in the Ex-Services Club board room as usual).

My predictions for the future of Microsoft (not that anybody asked, and hardly very original), are as follows. Microsoft has a few years to radically revise it's business model. If it doesn't do that, the only option left open to them will be an undignified demise, struggling vainly to maintin it's share price by claiming to own virtually every useful idea ever implemented as software, and suing every competitor they can find with deep pockets. We've seen this play out before on a smaller scale; it's a scam that doesn't work.

The long term survival of Microsoft depends on getting rid of the last of the old guard who will never accept change, enabling new boss Ray Ozzie, who is a smart guy, to make the necessary tough decisions. Microsoft did very well out of pioneering the strategy of raising funds by restricting what computer users can do with their software, and using that capital to get the jump on their competitors. However in the long run this business model fails to produce software people actually want to use, and the quality of more ethically-produced software will eventually catch up. Microsoft's management and owners may not want to hear that the future will inevitably be less lucrative than the past, but Microsoft needs to find new revenue streams that don't involve making enemies of their users and producing software that is deliberately less useful than it could be. It'll be Microsoft, but not as we know it. The opportunities to leverage their current dominance to do this successfully are only going to diminish over time. I'll go out on a limb and say that if they don't change direction in the next couple of years, Microsoft will be a shadow of it's former self in five years (that's a safe prediction, as that's the case now - it's just that not many people know it), and practically gone in ten.

I've been using Firefox 3 for the past few weeks, and today it's officially released. I've found most of the new features to be unobtrusive and generally useful, so I'd recommend it to anyone. The folks at Spread Firefox are calling today "Download Day", and are attempting to set a Guiness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. You've got till 5:00pm UTC (2:00 am tomorrow morning our time), so get downloading!

Now I did say at the end of last meeting that I had an idea for a prepared, semi-formal presentation which I'd be able to deliver at this meeting if I had time. As it turns out, I didn't have time, so you've all had a reprieve. Be warned that I might get my act together in time for July. So it will be a general free-for-all as usual, andas usual in the Board Room of the Ex-Services Club at 7:00pm on Wednesday.

There should be plenty to talk about. Many people have been observing lately that Windows XP has become the Energiser bunny of operating systems, due in no small part to the rise of small, light, low-cost computers incapable of running WIndows Vista. This brings the total number of incredibly popular technology phenomena which Microsoft utterly failed to predict up to, well, all of them actually.

One thing that Microsoft can do well is predicting the past, and as they scramble to buy themselves into the (for the moment at least) lucrative yet utterly boring and ludicrously over-valued business of classified advertising, one possible future is rising in the shape of Jimmy (Wikipedia) Wales' new(ish) venture Wikia Search, which has recently undergone a much-lauded revamp. I've had a play with this, and it's got something of the compelling quality of Wikipedia, but where Wikipedia is a non-profit project, Wikia Search is a business venture. I love a good wild prediction, so I'm willing to bet that historians of the future will point to Google's IPO as the start of their decline and fall. However whether Wikia Search will inevitably have it's usefulness and it's commitment to "transparency, community, quality, [and] privacy" compromised by business pressures is a bet I'm not willing to take.

ZDNet's Rupert Goodwins has compiled an amusingly cranky rogues gallery of annoying software, which is right on the money. Complaining about the unwanted extras RealPlayer foists on you, he says "If this software turned up at your door, you'd call the police." I will go further and say that even the software's primary function is a crime. "Streaming" is something that eyes, noses, and wounds do when you're not well, it's not something you should do to music or the spoken word; just let us download the file and play it back in our own time rather than forcing us to listen to two or three seconds at a time in between "buffering".

What's you're most resented software? Share your least favourites with us on Wednesday. A good rant can be therapeutic.

Things that don't work are much more intriguing than things that do. At least, that's the premise of the Revealing Errors blog, a site devoted to those moments when a gust of wind disturbs the curtain and you catch a tantalising glimpse of a flustered little man frantically pulling levers.

Here a garbled shopping receipt will teach you about the concept of interpolation, a sideways error message will show you how to buy a long thin display screen when only short wide ones are readily available, and where in the world you might be if your mobile phone thinks you're in a town called "bucklame".

Just found out that what I had previously known as "the Peach Project" has been released as "Big Buck Bunny". This is the second "open movie" project  designed to showcase and help develop the features of the Blender "3D content creation suite" (the first being the less funny and furry, and more arty, "Elephants Dream"). I haven't seen it yet, but will endevour to download a copy in time for the meeting (It's only ten minutes long).

The latest version of Blender, released a few weeks ago, boasts many new features developed as part of the Big Buck Bunny process. Sadly, I don't have what it takes to demonstrate Blender; it's professional-quality 3D software and just too huge and overwhelming for me. For those brave enough to give it a go, the Big Buck Bunny DVD includes all of the Blender files used to create the movie, so you can create your own movie using the same characters!

Team registration for Software Freedom Day 2008 is open. Personally I found last year's event a bit underwhelming (I have nobody to blame but myself for this), and was considering eschewing the day-long event this year for a couple of market stalls and a few talks at Chambers of Commerce, Rotary Clubs, and the like. However everyone I mention this idea to is appalled, and very keen to have another event as per the last few years.

So we should have a bit of a chat about what the Computer Club members think about this, and what the Computer Club's  contribution to SFD 2008 might be. Given that we have been told we cannot take our computers off-premises for events like Software Freedom Day, and the Ex-Services Club is not an adequate venue for such an event, as it now has only partial web access, this may not be such an impressive contribution as in past years. If we do decide to go with an all-day event this year, I would very much like somebody other than myself to act as "team contact". I am  as happy as ever to contribute as much as possible, but I think it would be good to get some new talent on the organisational side, as I'm afraid I've hit the limit of my potential in this area.

As ever, there will be plenty of time for questions, and rambling discussions on anything and everything tech-related this meeting.

I'm more than a little surprised to report that a jolly time was had by all at the last Computer Club meeting. Among the topics discussed were the new versions of Ubuntu and Firefox, and artificial Japanese girls: a good or bad thing?

One really brilliant discovery brought in by Ruben was the ABC's terriffic use of tagging (ad-hoc categorisation). You can keep track of news stories of interest to you, and thanks to the ABC's use of RSS feeds, you can even do so from your own website, or using the RSS feed reader of your choice. It's really gratifying to see these simple yet powerful technologies which I've been pushing for years working their way into mainstream use.

As we had such a smashing little meeting we resolved that, despite the risk of upsetting certain parties by doing so, we'd keep having them until it was no longer practically feasible to do so. 7pm in the Coffs Ex-Services Club board room as usual. There's no set agenda for the coming meeting, but I do have a query that perhaps someone could help me with: