As I said in an identi.ca message: “I am just now realizing how crazy this past week was. You don’t notice it when you are in the middle.”

But now that I am back and able to reflect on what happened I have this to say: WOW! I am really excited about what will be happening in Jaunty and beyond. I am sure that because this was my first UDS I am, on average, more excited than some. It is always inspiring to be in groups of highly productive and intelligent people all working towards the same (or similar) goals. Now that I have this inspiration it is time to see what I can do with it.

First: My personal/work project (I work for Creative Commons): Content producing/playing applications should be “license aware.” WHAT? By that I mean that applications that play media (songs, videos, images) could display the license for the currently playing item. A good example is Banshee. There could be an additional column that shows which license a song is licensed under. Words don’t describe it well, how about a picture:

The really cool part about the above image is that Gabriel Burt added that functionality after the discussion on Monday at UDS about this very topic. He saw my dent that it was being discussed and decided to code it up for Banshee. It apparently only took him 40 minutes (!) to do it. Gabriel is a rock star, pure and simple.

Gabriel also wrote all of the license detection code himself, which he didn’t need to. Creative Commons provides a LGPL licensed library (liblicense) that can read and write license metadata for a variety of file formats (ogg, mp3, pdf, jpg, png, mov, etc). But, Gabriel would have needed to write Mono bindings for liblicense as it is written in C and only has python and ruby bindings right now.

Second: The Jams that various LoCos have been putting on are always a winner. Whenever you get a group of people together who want to learn something new with each other good things tend to happen. The Michigan Team has done Packaging Jams and Bug Jams. There are even thoughts of expanding the idea to other activities (Answer Jams, Translation Jams [wouldn't work too well for US State teams], and such).

Third: Now that we are getting good at putting on events like Jams and release parties we should let others know how we do it! The various LoCo teams are going to start producing some Best Practices when it comes to hosting events and such. Basically, we want every team to know how Mr. 4k and the French LoCo were able to host a release party for FOUR THOUSAND people. Granted, not every team will be able to do something like that in April, but learning how the French LoCo performed marketing would help us all.

Fourth: The Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase is a great opportunity for artists to get their works on MILLIONS of computers worldwide; how can we get more participation in this contest? This is one project which I will be working on with Jono. Ideas: get the news out to other venues that we didn’t get to last time (ie: ccMixter).

I think that should be enough to keep me busy for the next few months. How about you: what projects/ideas really caught your attention at UDS?

I am not one to use Slashdot as a measure of the importance of an issue. I’m sure there is something I could link to right now showing the complete inanity of some stories, but I won’t.

HOWEVER, this just hit the Slashdot homepage: “Non-Profit Org Claims Rights In Library Catalog Data”

This is slightly old news and I thought about blogging it before. I tend to try and keep my posts on this blog mostly tech related with an obvious leaning towards Open Source (Ubuntu specifically) since I am on planet.ubuntu. However, I now feel ok to post this now since it is on Slashdot ;).

What’s the Deal?

So, in essence: The OCLC is changing their policies to restrict what their members can do with the bibliographic data which is provided. Bibliographic data is simply a collection of facts (Author, Title, publication date, etc) and is thus not able to be copyrighted. However, there is nothing stopping anyone from restricting what you can do with ANY data via a contract (think: EULA). This is what they are doing, they are stopping their members from sharing this collection of facts with other people who might be able to use those facts. Yes, some people might make a commercial use of those facts, but there are also others who, as nonprofits, are simply trying to make a wonderful product for all of humanity to use.

Ok, that last sentence was slightly over dramatic, but I want to get this point across: the limiting of this knowledge (facts are knowledge) only hurts us as a whole and only helps the OCLC; no one else.

The Code4Lib group, a collection of techies in the Library community, have a nice wiki page with more information on this change of policies, including a diff between the two versions. The page also includes others’ opinions (blog posts) on the matter.

Now, as happens regularly with me on issues related to library policy, others may disagree with me. These others may even be my co-workers and/or bosses. As such, the usual disclaimer of this is only my opinion and no one else’s etc etc applies here.

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

Here’s mine:

Pure acetic acid is completely miscible with water, ethanol, diethyl ether, and carbon tetrachloride, but it not soluble in carbon disulfide.

– Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, vol. 1, AAR-ANO

Yes, I’m sitting here at a library with nixternal before his presentation at the MUG meeting tonight. I don’t own that book, nor would I, even though it has some nice graphics and it is interesting. Most of what is in it I can find on teh intarwebs.

What are you reading?

I have been silent on this settlement on this site due to a few reasons (full disclosure):

• I was at the Open Content Alliance’s (OCA) yearly meeting in the Presidio of San Francisco when the settlement was announced. As such, I was privy to the private discussions between members of the OCA and others. I didn’t want to say anything I learned there before they had a chance to say it themselves.
• I work with a very high level administrator at the University of Michigan Libraries. The UofM Libraries are one of the Google Book “Fully Participating Libraries” and as such have a special relationship with Google. This relationship may cause members of the UofM libraries opinions’ of this settlement to be influenced in one direction or another.
• I have a personal moral preference to the methods of the Open Content Alliance and feel that some of Google’s Terms Of Use (in the contracts signed with libraries) are less than good.
• There have been many people saying contradictory things about this settlement; everyone couldn’t be right in their analysis. Just like sunlight is the best disinfectant, time is the best producer of truth.
• The settlement is one-hundred and forty-one (141!) pages long. This doesn’t include the fifteen (15!) attachments to the settlement. This is part of why so many were making false claims, they just didn’t get to the part that explained what would happen in the situation they were talking about.
• Plus, I was going to be giving a presentation on the Google Library Project for my class on Intellectual Property and Information Law (PubPol 688/SI 519). I decided to wait until after the presentation to post my views. I could have posted a draft of my presentation before to see what sorts of comments I would receive but to be honest, I wasn’t thinking that far in the future. Graduate School does that to me.

Here is the presentation I gave yesterday (2008-11-7):

(.odp, .pdf, .ppt)
Unfortunately, for you, my slides don’t contain all of the information I conveyed (because that presentation style sucks). Fortunately, for the students in the class, my slides didn’t contain all of the information I conveyed.

You will notice that my presentation takes a very hard look at the Settlement; I’m not one to see something like this and think it is the best outcome we could have had. Yes, there are some really great things to the settlement but that doesn’t mean I can’t critique the parts that are bad.

A quick example of one of the really great things the Settlement provides: All “Fully Participating Libraries,” libraries that have signed scanning agreements with Google and have had a sizable percentage of their libraries scanned, will have free access to the entire corpus of books Google has scanned. Not just the books that were scanned at that specific library, but the books scanned at all libraries. So, if you are a student at the University of Michigan, University of California, Stanford, or any of the libraries listed in Settlement Attachment G “Approved Libraries” you can be happy about that.

If, however, you are a student at any other university or college you won’t be as happy. Your school, unless it pays the subscription fee (not yet disclosed), will only be able to have a limited number of “terminals” that can be connected to the Google Library; a more correct term would be the Google Bookstore. Even the UofM’s own Paul Courant said this settlement will create the “Universal Bookstore;” he didn’t say “Universal Library.” But I digress….

These other libraries will have a set number of virtual terminals based on the size of their school (1 per 10,000 students or 1 per 4,000 students, depending on the type of school). These are virtual terminals because the access is restricted to a physical computer. The number of computers which have access to the service is a set number, but the computers with access could vary based on demand to any computer within the library.

Issues that I didn’t go into depth in my class presentation that are none-the-less important include:

• The effective monopoly on the materials that Google now has. Sure, others could join the game, at the $145 million price tag, but since this was a settlement not a legal decision there isn’t a lot of incentive for groups such as the OCA to go into talks with the AAP and Authors Guild.
• To continue my digression from above: the fact that this is going to be a “Universal Bookstore” not a “Universal Library” is slightly saddening.
  • I don’t have a legal reason to feel sad; the copyright holders have every right to charge for these materials. But I feel like everyone other than Google, the authors, and the publishers are being scammed. Again, not for a legal reason, but for a moral reason:
  • Libraries, through public funding, have been keeping these books safe for the last 70 years. These books, up until the day of the settlement, have had worthless to the publishers and authors. These books are out-of-print and thus all purchases of them have been paid to individuals base don the first-sale doctrine. Now, Google, through its Universal Bookstore, will sell you these books and pay the authors for them. Google will not pay the Libraries who were the ones who made this whole endeavor possible. Sure, the libraries agreed to only get the digital copies back as part of their agreements with Google, but that was before anyone had thought about this possibility. Should those contracts be renegotiated?<end_rant>
• What Happened to Fair Use?
  • This could possibly be one of my biggest critiques of this settlement: the pure fact that there is a settlement. This was a copyright infringement case brought against Google by two associations, the Associate of American Publishers and the Authors Guild. Google had a fairly good Fair Use argument and may have indeed won the case based on it. This would have been a GREAT THING (most likely). Others would have the same rights as Google as it pertains to the scanning and displaying of books.
  • Now, however, Google is a “special citizen” in this arena; they have “rights” others do not. Is that fair? No. Is that was is best for our future, and the future of libraries? No.

Hopefully I don’t sound too negative towards this settlement. Ok, lets be honest, I am pretty darn negative towards it. But hey, that is my job, at least what I see my job being. There are plenty of people out there being paid a large sum of money to tell you how good this settlement is. The ones who are out there telling you how bad it is are most likely not being paid to do so; I’m not.

If you have read this far and are still interested in this topic, you should check out what the rest of the world has been saying about this settlement. A good place to start would be TechDirt’s opinion on the matter. And, the Open Access News blog has posts that summarize others’ opinions in four parts (1, 2, 3, and 4).

EDIT:
Full Disclosure (thanks to Jon for reminding me): I am employed by Creative Commons and through that work have been involved with the OpenLibrary Project. Also, I am employed by Paul Courant, the Dean of Libraries for the University of Michigan. As thus, there may been some conflicting influences on my opinions. I am in a special dual position.

As you all know the next release of Ubuntu, Intrepid Ibex, is coming out at the end of this month. In recognition of all the great work that went in to making this release we are going to have a party!

What better way to thank and celebrate than heading to the local pub and toasting a few beers (or non-alcoholic drink) to everyone who made it possible?

The party starts at 7pm on Saturday Nov. 1st and will be at Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti.

Bring your significant other, invite your friends, and tell your neighbors.

Also, as is tradition I will be bringing a bunch of nice metal Ubuntu case badge stickers for everyone. You are also welcome to bring a copy or two of burned Intrepid CDs for those who might want a physical copy as I won’t be receiving our shipment of officially branded cds by the 1st.

Details:
Who: Ubuntu Michigan Local Community Team and YOU!
What: Intrepid Ibex Release Party!
When: Saturday November 1st at 7pm
Where: Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti
Why: Because we’re gonna celebrate!

An always up-to-date page for Release Party information can be found here.

I went down to Ohio Linux Fest and had a ball! Those people really know how to throw an event: good speakers and a great pre- and post-party. The Ubuntu community came out in force also. There were at least 10 people from the Michigan LoCo and even a few from Chicago (be careful with them). A big thanks goes out to everyone at OLF; I am definitely going back again next year.

Oh, and yes, we all did have a great [1] time [2] at the Dance Off which was so thoughtfully initiated by Jono. I would like personally apologize to everyone who witnessed that event.

And speaking of Jono, I just had the distinct pleasure of listening to the new Severed Fifth album, Denied by Reign. I’ll be completely honest with everyone: I’m not the biggest death metal fan. I even talked about this before briefly on my blog. But, even though I don’t listen to it I can still appreciate it when someone really does put a lot of themselves into their music and make it special. Jono has done that with Denied by Reign. No in-depth musical review from me but I will tell you that my favorite track so far is “Edge of Design.”

When this album comes out, you owe it to yourself to at least download it to show your support of what Jono is trying to do. If you didn’t know he is going to be licensing the album under a Creative Commons license. That isn’t the most radical thing as other bands have done similarly, but he is choosing a more open license than most and there aren’t many others in the Death Metal genre doing anything like this (prove me wrong if you can, please!).

What are you going to do? Just sit there?

And now that I am on my laptop I would have completely forgot about the meme. Until now.

My buddy is going to start a long process of changing his server to LVM. This is the transcript of our conversation:

Pete: and it all starts with $sudo rm -r /mnt/sda1/*
Pete: That’s a heavy line right there.
Me: yeah.
Me: damn
Pete: Intimidating, I know.
Me: you should take a shot before you hit enter.
Pete: You’re right. You’re damn right.
Pete: F**k, maybe you should take a shot before I hit enter.

And so, to show my solidarity with conviction I decided to record my shot and send it to him. Now, here it is for you too.

Greg taking a shot of Jameson (ogg video, 300K).*

And here I am:

Now the meme part:
1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair… just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.

* For some reason the video looks to be a little fast, sorry about that.

BIKE LOCK FAIL BLOG

For those of you just tuning in, see the first intallment: Seat Post.

Example 2: locking up your bike via your…

HANDLE BARS

Picture:

The Problem:

Cable simply passes around the handlebars and then through the bike stand.

How To Free the Bike

This picture includes my tri-tool already inserted into the bolt that secures the handle bars on the bike frame.  This tool is simply three different sized allen wrenches.  I carry this around with me at all times in case I need to tighten/fix anything on my bike.  Many people also carry (and should carry) a multi-tool with them at all times.

With 10 seconds of loosening, 5 seconds to remove cable, and another 10 seconds of tightening (25 seconds total) I could have a free bike!

In fact, I don’t even know if my tool is needed.  The cable is fairly long and even though the handlebars are themselve pretty long I think I could just pull the cable out around the ends of the bars and be done with it that way.  No tools required!

Lesson Learned

Don’t lock up your bike via your handle bars, nor your seat post.

Why I should have moved it

On this day, as you can tell from these next pictures, it was raining.  The spot this bike is in is my “usual spot” on campus, next to one of the Libraries.  This specific spot is right underneath an overhang thus during non-windy rain storms it protects the area from getting wet.  I don’t know about you, but I dislike a wet butt from a wet bike seat.

See how nicely their bike seat is protected?  Now look at what I had to do to try and keep my seat protected:

Good thing it stopped raining well before I wanted to head home and my seat had dried.  And no, I wouldn’t have moved it anyways, that would just be mean.

Till next time.

All Images CC:BY-SA Greg Grossmeier

To make it slightly easier to do this I have taken a page out of the Ubuntu Smokers group and created a Launchpad team.

Say hello to Ubuntu Cyclists! All those who love biking in whatever form are welcome to join!

EDIT: We need a cool Logo and Badge! Anyone who has talent want to make one? That’d be great! Email me, greg@ the domain of this blog.