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According to the Free Software Foundation, Defective by Design has delivered their iPad anti-DRM petition with 5,000 signatures to the founder of Apple.

The first 5,000 names have been printed on a four-foot tall “tablet” and shipped to Cupertino. Defective by Design will send a new tablet for every 5,000 signatures.

BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA — Thursday, February 4, 2010 — The Free Software Foundation’s (FSF) Defective by Design campaign against Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) delivered its “iPad is iBad for Freedom” petition to Apple CEO Steve Jobs today, demanding that he drop DRM on all Apple devices.

The petition is still accepting signatures, but the first 5,000 names have been printed on a four-foot tall “tablet” and shipped to Cupertino. Defective by Design will send a new tablet for every 5,000 signatures, so supporters can still add their voices at http://defectivebydesign.org/ipad.

This is an inventive way of getting the word out against DRM and the numerous legal barriers that come with most DRM technologies.

One example would be that when the Apple itunes store launched all the music was DRM encumbered, meaning you could only play the music on devices that could decode the AAC protected format. Defective by Design sent a petition to the founder of Apple and the DRM was (mostly) stripped off the itunes store. Hopefully this will happen again, with the iPad.

According to the defective by design campaign website the DRM is more than just preventing music from being pirated.

DRM will give Apple and their corporate partners the power to disable features, block competing products (especially free software) censor news, and even delete books, videos, or news stories from users’ computers without notice– using the device’s “always on” network connection.

This past year, we have seen how human rights and democracy protestors can have the technology they use turned against them. By making a computer where every application is under total, centralized control, Apple is endangering freedom to increase profits.

Apple can say they will not abuse this power, but their record of App Store rejections and removals gives us no reason to trust them. The iPad’s unprecedented use of DRM to control all capabilities of a general purpose computer is a dangerous step backward for computing and for media distribution. We demand that Apple remove all DRM from its devices.

Apple has taken it a step further according to defective by design, by literally acting like a dictator, censoring people on the internet who dare talk about connecting non Apple software to Apple products.

Apple abused the DMCA (legislation which makes it illegal for you to assert your basic rights by breaking DRM) to keep people from even discussing how to make other software players work with the iPhone. Apple tried to use the DMCA to force Bluwiki, a host of public wikis, to take down a public discussion of how to make other music player applications compatible with the iPod and iPhone. But iTunes compatibility isn’t illegal under the DMCA, let alone merely hosting a site that discusses it. It took seven months (during which the page was effectively censored) and the threat of an EFF lawsuit to make Apple back down. Apple feels so entitled to the lock-in that DRM provides that they try to stretch DRM legislation to cover cases where it doesn’t apply.

Sources:
www.defectivebydesign.org
www.eff.org

Microsoft threw a punch at Google in the search engine ring a few weeks ago by releasing its new search engine “Bing“. It ended up grabbing some market share from Google in the search engine sector (Google owns around 60% market share in the search engine business). While Microsoft’s “Bing” left no more than a ding on Google’s shoulder, I have heard estimates of each percent of the search engine market to be worth anywhere from 100 Million to 1 Billion USD so every percent counts.

So now its Google’s turn to throw a punch in retaliation, this time its looking to be a ringer. Google seems to want some market share from Microsoft in the Operating System arena, of which Microsoft is king, (Microsoft owns around 90%  market share in the operating system business). As you may have heard Google just announced their new Operating system known as “The Google Chrome OS“. They aim to make the operating system available for netbooks early on and then go for desktops later on once the OS matures. The operating system is free and Open Source. It uses the Linux kernel and according to Google the focus of the OS is on speed, security and lightness (memory usage). The Google Chrome OS will integrate with allot of Google’s core cloud applications such as their search engine, Google docs, Gmail etc.

Can this be called the first Cloud OS? While im not sure on the answer. It is clear that Google is making a statement towards Microsoft and If I were them I would board up the “Windows” and prepare for a long battle.

On another note, I think one thing to  look at is what affect this new operating system will have on the market share of others such as Ubuntu, FreeBSD, Open Solaris etc. Will it be similar to the same way that Googles Chrome browser effected other browsers market share when it was released? Firefox and Opera’s market share saw a slight rise as people realized that there is choice and Internet Explorer is not the only browser. I am hoping that the same thing happens to the Operating System market that happened to the browser market. We need competition not monopoly’s.

Now you are probably either saying one of two things “I love that program” or “what  is Open Office?”

Open Office is a FREE Open Source Office Suite alternative to Microsoft Office (Which can cost upwards of a few hundred dollars) Now your most likely thinking well that’s great but it cannot be as good as any of the Microsoft Office suites which include programs like Excel, Word, Publisher and PowerPoint. Well if you are thinking that you are wrong!

The Open Office suite is a very powerful set of tools that should be used by everyone, not only is it free so there is no reason not to try it, but it actually is just as good if not better in many ways than any of the Microsoft Office programs. Personally I originally started doing my school work on Microsoft Word, now this program was expensive and I was stuck with the version that I had until I paid for another one, which really was a set back since I could not read the newer forms of documents like .odf “Open Document Format” which is now a standard. (Open Office can read almost all Microsoft Word file types for example .doc files) So one day I heard about this program called Open Office and about how amazing it was so I tried it and was BLOWN AWAY! Not only did it make it easier for me to get my homework done but I did not have to worry about file types and updating to the newest version. The great thing is that there is very little to no learning curve since it looks almost similar to the Microsoft programs.

So you may be wondering who wrote these wonderful programs in the Open Office suite? Well to name a few of the businesses who have contributed code to the project: Sun Microsystems, Novell, RedHat, RedFlag CH2000, IBM and Google. Not to mention the over 450,000 people from around the world who have contributed help ranging from bug fixes, new feature ideas to writing some of the actual code its self. It really is a community made piece of software that really shows how powerful a global open source project can be when large communities get involved.

One great place where Open Office can really help is implementing it into Government situations where a Word Processor is needed, for example. This cuts the cost of computer labs in public schools drastically as no multi thousand dollar licenses are needed to hand out the software to employees/teachers/students as anyone can use it because its free.

I remember in 2 of the schools I went to they used Microsoft products like Word and now I look back and wonder why they did not use free alternatives to save money? Was it because they did not know of them at the time? probably. It must cost thousands of taxpayers dollars to get licenses to use Microsoft Software on all of the computers in the Canadian school districts, personally I would rather use Open Office which is free/better and put the money which was spent on the Microsoft products to better use in the school districts.

I highly recommend Open Office to anyone who is currently using Microsoft Office software, Its just a must have and there is nothing to lose by trying it out.

here is a link to where you can learn more about it at why.openoffice.org

If you are already convinced then download it now at www.openoffice.org

What is Folding @ home? Well well Folding @ home is a very simple program created by some great programmers from Stanford University, it allows you to contribute to medical science by helping scientists learn more about “Protein Missfolding” basically when a protein carries out its function or “folds” it can sometimes missfold which can cause diseases like “Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.”

It takes super computers and millions of dollars to do simulations of proteins folding however the science community does not have the money nor the resources to do such work, but you can help!

You can help scientists learn more about why and how protein missfolding occurs by running a piece of software. They call the software Folding @ home because you are simulating proteins folding by using your Processor and or video card (if you have a powerful enough one).

How does this work? Well Supercomputers are really just a bunch of cheap computers combined into one giant machine, kinda like getting 100 people to do one job instead of just 1 person. So what Stanford has come up with is a way to do their protein simulations on your computer with out affecting its performance or security. Now you might be saying, well how can that be if my Processor is running at 100%? Well what they do is use your “Idle CPU cycles”.

I will explain how this works by using government roadwork projects as an example, So when you see some road workers fixing the road there are usually 4 out of 10 of the workers standing around doing nothing, now say you take those 4 that are standing around and get them to do other work since they aren’t needed at that moment for the roadwork project you can get them to do science for the time being and then when their needed at the road works project they go back to filling in the pothole.

Basically you don’t even notice that your computer is crunching away simulating proteins folding, you can continue to browse the web and check your email with out any difference or impact on performance.

Whats the cost? Well besides your power bill being a bit higher from your processor being used at full capacity 24/7 there is no other cost to you as a user, think of that slightly higher power bill as donating money to help scientists cure and learn about diseases.

Sounds good how do I get involved? Head over to Stanford Universities website for Folding @ home where you can read more about it and download the client, there are instructions on how to get it working on their site in the FAQ section.

Personally I have 4 computers and one PS3 right now chugging away folding proteins. I also have a folding team set up, the team ID is 111659 the stats and leader boards are a great way to motivate people to contribute by activating that competitive spirit everyone has!

Oh I almost forgot to mention that if you have a playstation 3 you can contribute to Folding @ home with that too! All have to you do is make sure the PS3 is internet connected and go to the network menu then go down and hit install “Life with Playstation” you can set it to automatically launch by hovering over the icon once its installed and hit the triangle button then set it to launch after a set period of inactivity. Then your done your PS3 should start crunching away once you launch the program.

I just installed the newest version of Ubuntu and im loving it, its even better then before which is to be expected from any open source project. Now some of you may be wondering what is Ubuntu? If you have been in a hole for your whole life (no pun intended) and you have never heard of Ubuntu then you really need to check it out. It is a Free Open Source operating system, Thats right FREE! It is like Windows but much more secure and easier to use, also it looks better and runs faster (Im not just saying this, its true).

I have been a Ubuntu user since at least version 6.o6 and it has changed drastically, when I first used it I thought that it had great potential but it was not user friendly at all and yet something kept drawing me back to it and I struggled between using Windows Xp and Ubuntu for a while and since I was dual booting I could just switch between the two operating systems, I found my self using Ubuntu more and more then I ran into a problem that is unfortunately a big one, you cannot play Windows games on Ubuntu! Well you can technically but not all of them work and they run at lower frame rates, (Im pretty sure both games, World of Warcraft and Counter Strike:Source work under “Wine” in Ubuntu as well as others) However I could not play all the games I wanted to because most of the video games were written for Windows and not Ubuntu, there are some cheeky ways of getting some games to work but I wanted all my games to work!

So I ended up using Ubuntu most of the time (Web browsing and  School work) then switching to Windows XP to play video games (Obviously in that order!) as I would never play video games before my school work was done! Basically the only thing that should prevent anyone from using Ubuntu as their Operating system is program incompatibility, which is unfortunate as Ubuntu is light years ahead of Windows Vista or even Windows 7 which isn’t even out yet.

The problem with Windows (Xp, Vista and 7) is that it is still based upon Windows NT! So you really are running a spit shinned version of Windows 3.1, and since Windows3.1 was made before the whole internet thing was going on it is inherently not very secure and thus all the viruses, spyware, maleware etc.

Ubuntu doesn’t have these problems as it is running on Linux now im not going to get technical but to put it bluntly Linux is better then Windows NT. Why? you might ask, well Linux is Open Source and so is Ubuntu and that means that the “code” or “source code” is freely available for anyone to look at or download, now what this means is that if someone finds a security vulnerability or a bug in the code they can point it out and then the manager of the program can then implement a fix for it if he/she thinks its a good idea. Basically you have a whole community of programmers writing fixing and scrutinizing code all for free and it all comes together into amazing pieces of software like Ubuntu.

Conclusion: Ubuntu 9.04 is amazing and is now ready for the average user even the most computer illiterate can use it, however if you are tied into using proprietary programs that only run on windows (like some computer games) then your stuck in the Microsoft trap.

I could list all of the  features in Ubuntu 9.04 or you can just go to this link and find out for your self, it also has a nice sideshow of what the desktop looks like.

Here is a link to the Ubuntu website where you can get more information on the operating system and download it.

Ubuntu.com

I highley recomend this operating system its the only way to go if you are using a computer.