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OfficeMax had listed a mediocre 19″ widescreen LCD from AOC for a “Clearance” price of $53.74.  A friend of mine ordered one yesterday, but has since received a notice that his order was being canceled as that price was an “obvious typographical error.”  For one, that price is not THAT exciting for a generic 19″ monitor, and secondly, they did list it as clearance.  I do not believe that a company should be able to arbitrarily cancel orders because they decide that a price THEY set is no longer the price they wish to sell them for.  Essentially, they saw a number of customers rush to buy these and decided “hey, we could have made the price point higher — let’s cancel the orders and jack up the price!”

OfficeMax: congratulations.  I will never again shop at your store, regardless of price or convenience.  Staples and Office Depot will be the only suppliers of office supplies for me.  Hopefully, someone will file a class-action suit against you for this.  This is a classic bait-and-switch routine.  Cheap, unethical, business practices.

Details at SlickDeals: http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=1579105

As you may have noticed, my site (Tuxteam.com) has moved back to WordPress.  While I still support Drupal (and use it at work), it did not meet my needs for my site.  Specifically, the ability to create per-tag feeds was lacking, and it used a LOT of RAM for such a simple site.  (This site runs on a Linode-360.)  The theme is a stock community theme, but I hope to be switching that around some in the near future.  I’m also going to be starting a couple of new things on here, but we’ll see how those work out.

Today, Google sent a C&D to Cyanogen, the maker of one of the most popular replacement firmwares for the Android platform. His firmware is based on the official Android firmware, but provides a few new features, like direct-dial shortcuts on the home screen, more home screens (5 by default) and root access.

The root access allows tethering from a notebook computer, so I can get 3G internet on something where I can actually read most of the sites. Looks like I might have to consider another platform.

Google: nice way to show how you can use FOSS to choke off an active development community. You should update your site where it says “Do no evil” to be “Do no evil, unless it makes even more money.”

Atlanta Linux Fest 2009 was a huge success! We probably had 600+ people come through the door, which is just amazing for the 2nd year of an event that was only 125 people last year! 22 successful presentations, many of which were standing room only. Planning for next year is just around the corner, so stay tuned to http://atlantalinuxfest.org.

Big thanks go out to fellow planners Nick Ali, Jim Popovitch, Joshua Chase, and Amber Graner! If any one of us had been missing, I doubt things would have worked out. Also a big thanks to the spawn of akgraner for filling in the gaps and keeping us rolling in stitches!

The city of Bozeman, Montana has decided that all applicants for city jobs must provide them with the usernames and passwords for social networking sites, forums, and chatrooms that the applicant participates in. This fits into the category of things I think are hoaxes until I read it a few times over.

From NetworkWorld: http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/42819

This presentation discussed the benefits and future of Free IT Athens and other community-oriented technology centers.

They provide free/low-cost computers, computer training, and other technology support for underprivileged and low-income citizens in Athens. They refurbish computers to both prevent them from ending up in a landfill and to enable children and adults to gain knowledge and the benefits of the use of the Internet and computers in general.

On July 18, ALE, the Ubuntu GA Loco, and Free IT Athens will be holding a joint event to visit the Free IT Athens venue and donate equipment for refurbishment. I hope to be able to join them and help in these goals. I may, by then, have a couple of machines that could be used for this purpose, which is good for the environment and for the community.

FreeLinuxPC.org was also discussed with similar goals and ideas as Free IT Athens. FreeLinuxPC.org is also trying to build computer labs for low-income areas, some with standalone systems, and some with thin-client systems. FreeLinuxPC, in its long-term vision, wants to provide organization and information to organizations like Free IT Athens and others with similar goals.

Finally, the Gussie Greene Community Technology Center has similar goals, but has its own identity. This is a top-down approach to addressing the digital divide in South Carolina.

I missed a couple of hours of speakers, but hopefully they'll post the videos of it online. During that time, I visited the booths a bit more, and got into some interesting discussions. I found out about The Linux Link Tech Show, a weekly live podcast talking about Linux related issues. I talked with int eighty from Dual Core about their music, and his appearance on Hak.5. I also spent a bit of time talking with the Zenoss Community Manager, and I'm going to propose switching our monitoring at work from Nagios to Zenoss. It's significantly more powerful and robust, and I'm sure I'll have more to say after giving it a try. On top of all this, I talked with the guys from Free IT Athens. They refurbish computers for, and provide training to, the underprivileged citizens of Athens, GA.

I also attended a Birds of a Feather session for a GPG keysigning. Hopefully that will improve the web of trust for my key, as well as the keys of others. It's also something I'd like to organize for ALF or an ALE meeting. Having independently trusted keys strengthens both the web of trust and the usefulness of GPG.

Presentation by Wendy Seltzer <firstname@lastname.org>

DMCA
-Section 512 (ISP Safe Harbor, Notice, Takedown)
-Section 1201 (Anticircumvention)
1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act
- +20 years to all copyright terms (existing and future)

Betamax exception: Technology used primarily for non-infringing purposes should not be seen as infringing even if some infringing use occurs.

McCain posted clips of interviews on YouTube, networks of original videos filed DMCA takedown notices, resulting in removal of his clips. Lawsuits under 512(f) to remedy false takedown claims.

Google shows that links have been removed per DMCA as well as publication of DMCA complaint via Chilling Effects. These complaints include the original links to the content, as the DMCA requires specificity in filing a takedown complaint.

Similar to Chilling Effects, MIT runs a site known as YouTomb which attempts to track videos removed as DMCA violations. In this site, you will find both legitimate and abusive uses of the DMCA.

The French HADOPI act, struck down by French Constitutional Court (Internet Access is key to exercising basic human rights), said that 3-time violators of copyright should have their Internet access shut off and be banned from getting a new ISP account.

Anticircumvention: If there is a technological measure intended to protect copyright, it is an independent violation of the law to break that measure. Sharpies for copy-protected CDs? Lexmark claimed the chip in their toner cartridge constituted an “effective technological measure” to prevent production of 3rd party cartridges.

MPAA claims that videorecording a TV set constitutes an acceptable analog alternative to using software to circumvent DVD protection, and thus DeCSS and similar technologies should not be allowed as an exemption under DMCA. This comes from the same group that has fought for laws prohibiting bringing a videorecording device into a movie theater. (Recorded by Timothy Vollmer, video of video of video on Vimeo)

“Sorry, you can't interoperate with that with Free Software.” Anti-consumer features embedded solely in hardware and proprietary software. Free software would make users able to increase the usefulness of their DVDs and other media, but would potentially allow for infringing uses of the system.

Authors of DMCA probably did not realize impact of anticircumvention provisions, nor realize the potential power of FOSS in the realm of media. Congress is also probably not aware of the nature of the Open Source software running the rendering clusters involved in producing the movies, the servers distributing the content and trailers and other information, and many other components necessary for their infrastructure.

In closing: Monorail Kitteh now stops @ Library.

I'm currently at the first annual South East Linux Fest (in the opening keynote) and I'm really impressed with what they put together. It's not huge, but it's really impressive and really professional. I'm very impressed by the conference badges, the bags, the turnout, and the arrangements. I think there's a lot from this we can take away for the Atlanta Linux Fest, especially promotion-wise. ALF is in about 3 months, but that doesn't mean we can't get some things together.

Handing out conference schwag doesn't seem like a big benefit, but giving these things out to attendees will foster a more professional image for speakers and vendors, and provides attendees something to take home to remind them about the conference for the next one. (Delayed returns, yes, but returns nonetheless).

Increased promotion is a no-brainer. Organizing (and possibly funding) increased promotion can pose a problem. Some ideas: break up promotional methods, areas, etc. Start attaching conference stickers to Ubuntu CDs being distributed. Find out about placing signs at Frys, Microcenter, and maybe game stores (even the DND style game stores probably have a decent overlap with the Linux community). Also, academic institutions — signs at universities, especially around their Computer Science departments, are likely to attract attention.

Perhaps most importantly is to build an 'image' for a conference. SELF has a very distinctive logo, and the logo is present on their website, their conference materials, and the badges at the conference. This provides cohesiveness and prepares a brand for the conference.

Some thoughts to think about, and I'm sure I'll come up with more as we progress through the day.

I often use a number of PPAs on one or more of my systems, such as FreeNX, Firefox dailies, Chromium dailies, etc. I do like to use signed packages, even if they’re automatically signed, but manually installing the PPA keys is a bit of a pain. The Source Guru has a solution.