TechLayers

Lack of Extracurricular Participation

2011-02-10T23:56:00.000-05:00

Recently my school sent out a brief survey to students in leadership positions. The survey was in response to a dramatic decrease in student participation in extracurricular activities, of which they wanted to discover the cause. So I asked myself: why do students not participate in clubs anymore? Below was my response if you care to read it. :)

First, let me disclaim that I apologize for the length of my comments, but whenever I make a point on a subject I like to be comprehensive. Below are my feelings on the motivation of high school students in the Staten Island Technical High School environment and what could be improved upon to help dramatically and quickly resolve the situation before the school and its students begin to feel adverse effects. I should also note that all observations made herein are not intended to insult any specific students, but are merely generalizations based on limited observations. There are many students in all grades whom I consider some of my closest friends, so what I say below does not apply to absolutely everybody.

It should first be observed that the reason for the significant drop in extracurricular population is not entirely to blame on the school and its infrastructure. As Co-Director of Tech Crew, I have taken in new recruits each year of my high school career, and it is clearly obvious that each grade level has their own sort of generalized personality that is inherited throughout the class. In other words, each grade has its own unique features. While we cannot know for sure, one can postulate that the reasoning behind this generalization in student behavior has to do with the collective experiences of each grade, most notably their transition into high school and external social forces. For example, I have observed that the current senior class is highly motivated, and quite a number of students take their school work and extracurriculars very seriously. (It is noted that there are a number of specific exceptions, but deeper analysis should reveal that these exceptions are not entirely disconnected from the generalized personality as aforementioned.) The junior class, however, is slightly less motivated, tending to prefer informal social communication to organized activities. Furthermore, there are a significant percentage of students who tend to overvalue their accomplishments, which may lead to a decrease in participation. Diving further off the cliff, the sophomores just do not care as much, are extremely immature, and seem to have no sense of loyalty or dedication. (Again, this does not apply to everybody; it is just from my own limited observations.) Finally, the current freshmen class is substantially more dedicated, so it looks like there is still hope, but as they are still early on in the high school acclimation process, to decide this conclusively would be premature.

Moving on, as said, each class has its own unique characteristics, and thus is motivated through different techniques. I find it highly unlikely many sophomores would register and attend a College Now class at 6:45 in the morning. Furthermore, juniors would already have too much on their plate and seniors simply do not care since College Now can no longer help them with their resume. When the student body advances a grade level or two, and they are filled by new, hopefully more academically dedicated classes, College Now registrations will definitely go up. In other words, the recent situation with College Now is a matter of circumstance, not protocol. (However, it should also be noted that another reason students do not register for College Now is that many students believe their only motivation for registration is so they can obtain college credits, but since many students aspire to go to colleges that do not accept College Now credits, the program is near useless. It should be reinforced that College Now classes are also for expanding one's knowledge and experience, rather than just something on your transcript.)

Other than improvisation, there is really not much you can do to anticipate each grade's individual generalized personality. However, there are still a number of general problems circulating through the school environment that seem to dull students' attitudes and confidence in our school, which then leads to decreased participation in local extracurricular activities. A good way to view these problems is in the form of a triangle: the first corner represents a lack of confidence in our school (passive environmental discouragement); the second: a lack of motivation to participate (passive situational discouragement); and the third: an increasing number of external activities (active situational discouragement).

Dealing with the first of those points, passive environmental discouragement means that students have a lack of confidence in our school, and because of that they have a general dislike for being in the school environment, which thus leads to decreased participation. The obvious resolution to this is to make the school environment more fun and enticing, but to do that you must first find out what made it dull and lacking excitement in the first place. For one, students are not represented in our school whatsoever. It seems there is no battle a student can win, and no way to fight for student rights, and to feel like you are the prisoner of a barrack of dictatorial adults is not the most pleasant feeling (note that this is not my personal feeling, just a general observation). If students were given more choice and flexibility as to their curriculum, school policy, etc., the school environment would be much more exciting. Take the library, for instance. The reason game-playing, talking, and other similar activities are not allowed in the library is because the school administration intends the library to be a place solely for quiet, non-collaborative studying. However, just because the administration wants this does not mean that is what the students want. Students go to the library to make up homework they forgot to do last night, study with friends for a test the next period, or escape the rancorous cafeteria for forty-one minutes so their school days has at least a little excitement in the seemingly continuous boredom that is a nine period schedule. Note that the only activity in that list that involves silence is number one. In other words, the students want the library to be more of a social venue than an academic venue, because if a student has one period free for lunch in between eight other periods of classes, the last thing they want to do is a non-mandatory academic activity. The library situation is not the primary thing affecting participation in extracurricular activities, but it is simply this paradigm of the school administration not seeking to even poll student opinion before determining important policy decisions that leads to the feeling of entrapment and lack of choice. Teenagers are in a range of years where rebellious behavior is of our nature. Development of the prefrontal cortex allows students to think comprehensively about decisions rather than take them on command; as adolescents progress into stage four of Kohlberg's stages of moral development, their motivation for determination of ethics and morals becomes fundamentally altered, allowing them (including myself) to question directives that were previous unquestionable. And as much as it may seem like the right thing to do, stifling this development by refusing to allocate any authority to students is not the right path to proper social development, and it is definitely not the right path to getting students to stay in school so they participate in activities and clubs.

Another cause for dislike of the school environment is a general disrespect for the environment. For example, for the most part our school is technologically-impaired, which leads to the idea that Tech is outdated or not modernized. This thus causes a nonspecific discouragement from participation in events that take place in our school. I could go into an entire separate essay on how our school has no technological intuition whatsoever, but that is a topic for another day. Just realize that the more valuable resource for the administration to learn about technology is the very students to whom they are providing it.

The second corner of the theoretical triangle is passive mental discouragement; even if students are in an entirely open mental position to extracurricular participation, they will not do so unless there is some type of active motivation to draw them into the activity. This primarily has to do with the lack of interesting programs available to students; of the clubs that may even remotely interest our student body, those that do have no easy way of finding when they meet, what they do, or who is in charge. I myself have found that I have been participating in fewer and fewer extra-curricular activities because either there is nothing interesting going on, or I have no way of finding out who is meeting where in the first place. Furthermore, from what I have seen, most extracurricular activities in our school end up being student-initiated, and while there is nothing better than an entirely student-led program (Tech Crew, one of the more independent organizations of our school, being a perfect example), when there is a lack of such initiative, there must be some sort of backup in order to assure that there are still a significant number of available activities in which students can participate. To summarize, when there are not enough interesting activities, the school administration should attempt to start some of their own so that later on students can take over.

The final, and probably the most important, part of this decrease in participation, is the active mental discouragement, i.e., the events outside of school that are replacing the activities inside of school. Now naturally the first thing that comes to mind is socialization and external community service activities, but one of the biggest things that discourages students from staying in school is the necessity to do homework (furthermore, this is also a passive environmental discouragement as students associate school with homework and thus are discouraged from remaining in school because they associated the environment with the assignment of tough and time-consuming homework). Now I am not arguing that homework be eliminated, because that would all but destroy our school's infrastructure. However, there is no enforceable policy that limits the length of homework assigned by teachers. Sometimes I go home to more than an hour of homework from one class alone, whereas the next day that same class's homework takes only five minutes. If students are constantly insecure about how much work they are going to have awaiting them when they get home, it is no wonder they choose to leave early rather than spend their time in extracurricular activities. In addition to the issue of homework, we have now entered a new generation of online social interactions, where students prefer a technological method of communication over more conventional methods when not absolutely necessary. The point of stating this is that with the school's apparent lack of technological intuition, it is hard for school activities to compete with online social alternatives. Why would any child of Generation Z choose to come to a "boring" school activity when they could immerse themselves in a complex online world? It is exactly this appeal that has made online communities so popular in recent years, and if physical communities were to follow suit with online communities, they would make much more progress in emulating their participatory success.

To sum up everything I have explained, the primary points of interest the school administration must deal with if they hope to ensure a continuing supply of extracurricular participation is:

Find out what students want, and try to meet their expectations to a reasonable accuracy (and do not assume the Student Organization already meets this need, because that is an entirely different essay).
Make it easier to find out where and when clubs are meeting, how to contact who is in charge, and how to join. Announcements are never heard and today’s teenagers never check email, so our current system simply does not cut it.
Come up with interesting events and programs that can be initially teacher-led but eventually taken over by students, e.g., more social events such as Winter Wonderland or something exciting such as a handball tournament (do not use these examples specifically as I am not an expert in coming up with successful extracurricular activities as can be shown from my history of doing so).
Put closer regulations on the amount of work students get, and create actual methods of filing complaints when these regulations are not followed. Students and Teachers should be regarded as equals. We are not in a school that needs to excessively worry about maintaining a conventional student-teacher relationship.
Talk with the students about technology, because there is a lot to learn. Just because our school uses a "cool" online service like Data-cation does not mean we have redeemed our name as a technical school.

This is only a partial list of what should be done to fix our school, but hopefully it will shed some light on the problems students face when posed with the choice between spending more time in school and spending more time casually hanging out with friends. Also keep in mind that while targeting specific populations in an attempt to involve the less participatory students may seem like the right path of action, you do not want to lose the students who are open and waiting for something to do. In any community, those that have time and resources they want to give are the most valuable resource, whereas the outliers that the community is trying to pull in are merely secondary.

Facebook takes on Gmail, then Google takes on Groupon

2011-01-28T11:30:00.009-05:00

It seems the world of online business never has a shortage of cutthroat competition, rumors, and one company trying to take over another. Nowadays everybody is looking for the upper hand, and nobody is satisfied with what they've got. It's the unfortunate truth of our small world. Anyway, back in November of last year, all the buzz what about Facebook's new messaging system, but now it seems Facebook is handing out invitations to the system a little more liberally, which hints that things are moving along behind the scenes of the world's largest social networking site. The new system, for lack of a better explanation, is an exact copy of Gmail with some add-ons akin to Google Wave, and looks pretty much like an attempt on the life of email itself, though Facebook claims otherwise. Move forward two months, and now Google is making a similar move, except with Groupon. What started as mere rumors and a suspicious new logo has now been confirmed as Google Offers, Google's newest service that will help buyers find deals in their neighborhood, exactly like Groupon.

The reason I find the new Facebook Messages so disturbing is that Facebook really did not put any creativity into the matter. Conversations instead of separate messages (Gmail's original feature), smart filtering that puts your important messages on top (Gmail's Priority Inbox), a paradigm that combines email, chat, SMS, and other forms of communication (similar to the goal of Google Wave, not to mention you can email, chat, and SMS from Gmail already), group conversations with the ability to add and remove recipients (clearly Google Wave), and "revamped search" as Facebook calls it. There is not a single feature in the new Facebook messages that has not already been covered by previous technology. In fact, the only unique change is something they removed. They got rid of the subject line. Unfortunately for Facebook users, Mark Zuckerberg knows that with a few words he can change our entire worlds to his liking. Facebook has hundreds of millions of users, and very few of them can socially afford to leave, so no matter what changes are made to the UI or the infrastructure of the site, as long as Facebook serves the same social needs it's always been delivering on, nobody is willing to leave.

And the real dagger in the heart behind it all: a Facebook email address. That's right, you can now contact me at parent5446@facebook.com, but to tell you the truth if you do I'd never speak to you again. Once you activate the new Facebook messages, you get your own email address at Facebook that is a copy of your username. The clear intent here is to draw people away from services like Gmail and Ymail so that they can get forever lost in the addiction of Facebook. However, what they don't realize over there in Palo Alto is that their plan is flawed and highly unlikely to succeed. Most people who use email do so because it is more professional than traditional communication. Companies looking to hire usually don't Facebook message their employees, and something tells me a Facebook email address does not change the situation much. Google learned the hard way from Wave that people are not interested in merging all forms of communication. Most of the people I know who want to consolidate their electronic systems are computer nerds.

But to discover really why email is not dying anytime soon with the new Facebook messages, all you have to do is ask yourself one question: why do people use Facebook? I, for one, use Facebook to find out what my friends are doing, how they're feeling, and overall remain involved in everybody's lives. When a person feels like they don't have control of a system, they find ways to take control. So when you average everyday Facebook user feels like they cannot control their social life, they go to Facebook to find out what everybody is saying or doing, and by improving their knowledge of the social system, thus feel they are gaining more control. You may not think about it while you're going about your everyday life, but in reality life is just an attempt to get the upper hand. I mean, bringing it right back to Facebook itself, what other motive could Mark Zuckerberg possibly have to attack email other than to get the upper hand on Google? Unless, of course, you think Facebook actually cares about their users and what they want, in which case I would like to remind you of the many UI changes that have been so strongly protested by Facebook users. And to complement that: why do people use email? Email is a more professional and more private form of communication. People use it because it's more official than sending a Facebook message. A Facebook email address is not going to make Facebook any less professional. In other words, the new Facebook messages will not kill email because not only do users not care about consolidating their communication, all the reasons people use email remain in effect despite the new messaging system.

So the new messaging system was announced, and time goes on. Now we are faced with Google making an attack of its own. Groupon is a coupon website that connects users with deals and discounts from local merchants. Much like advertisers register with Google to get their ads placed in Google's content network, merchants register with Groupon to get their coupons delivered to users. The revenue model is similar as well. Everybody wants to save money, so naturally Groupon grew fast as people used it to get discounts faster and more automatic than ever before. And, of course, it reached the point where social media began to take notice. Soon thereafter, Google began serious dealing with Groupon to try and buy them out, but Groupon turned Google down. And as payback, Google is now launching its own Groupon competitor: Google Offers. It started as mere rumors, but it was later confirmed and we can expect to see local offers popping up in our search results in the near future.

So what does Google taking on Groupon have anything to do with Facebook taking on email? Well, the connection is simple, but not obvious. They are both cases of very big corporations who are not satisfied with what they have, trying to get more and more, not caring about the rest of the industry or the users and consumers for that matter. There used to be a time where the realm of technology and computers was pure and communal, a time where sharing actually was caring, and the corruption of big business had not yet been able to break into the fortress of online communities. Both of these events are stark reminders of how far we've come, and what is really going on the tech world. There are so many entrepreneurs out there that go into the world thinking they can come up with the next cool online service and become successful, but the instant they breach the threshold of notability, big corporations will be coming for everything they've got, and that's the reason why the world has gotten the way it is today.

Apple Butts Heads with the GPL

2011-01-10T10:38:00.000-05:00

Well, yet again Apple has found its way into one of my blog posts. Personally I hate to bore everybody with news you all probably know already and companies that even everyday consumers have heard of, when I could be writing about more interesting niche companies that even I have not heard of, but on issues like this I have a strong opinion, so interested or not I'd like to get my two cents out there for whoever may want to read it.

For those not familiar with the application, VLC is a platform-independent media player developed by the VideoLAN project, and is notorious for cross-platform support as well as its freedom. The latter quality is what brings us to today's issue. For the longest time there was one platform that VLC just could not seem to penetrate: iOS. Creating an app for Apple's App Store is difficult considering their tough licensing terms, but the idea of VLC on the iPhone was actually a reality, until the free software community got a reality check.

VLC is licensed under the GNU General Public License, which means not only can it be freely copied, distributed, and modified, but it must be done under the same license. In other words, you cannot copy VLC and then make it proprietary, because that would be absurd (and illegal, of course). Unfortunately, Apple cannot cope with the word "freedom", because such frivolities do not exist in the totalitarian utopia they have created for their end users. In short, Apple attempted to put Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) on the VLC app, like they do with all apps in the App Store, and one of VLC's original developers Rémi Denis-Courmont cried foul and attempted to file suit over copyright violation. And, in the end, the VLC app has been pulled from the App Store, and VideoLAN lovers across the world (the size of such population being quite significant) will be disappointed to find that Apple has once again imposed its dictator tactics to try and "clean up" its perfect world. All Apple would have had to do was follow along with the GPL for this one app, and everything would have been fine.

Some might consider this a success for the free software community. Once again the legal weight of the GPL has successfully managed to force Apple to either free the app or dump it. It just further emphasizes the importance of having an actual license on your free software. However, as can be observed from previous example, it is highly unlikely that consumers are going to leave Apple to find VLC elsewhere. Consumers do not care about the legal battle taking place behind the scenes of the software community; all they care about is if they can watch their videos or not. So in the long run all this will mean is that iPhone users can no longer watch Apple-compatible videos on their devices, all because Apple cannot stand the idea of freedom in their Utopian consumer society.

A Review of the Nook Color

2011-01-01T15:38:00.003-05:00

Been awhile huh? Well I've got a little writing inspiration in the form of a freshly rooted Nook Color and I'm here to share the journey.

A common practice of computer buyers these days is instead of doing too much research and learning what they need to know, they find the most computer savvy person they know and fling questions at them like a monkey with diahrrea. I know for sure that I get these questions almost like clockwork come Thanksgiving. And I expect to see it later in my life as well. But maybe in the future, I won't be choosing a computer, but instead a tablet device.

While the Apple iPad's sales have been stagnating this holiday season, it is still a desired object by many people. Not necessarily heavy computer users, but more so by the general public and hipsters of the world. I've always wondered where the strange desire comes from. I could never type out anything of value on an iPad, and I still cant. Maybe thats because the length of my index finger is less than 3.5 inches, or maybe the iPad is just too big.

Soon enough other manufacturers began to clone the iPad in their own variations and iterations. Tablet devices have mainly come out of strange unheard of Chinese companies, but there are a few brand name ones from Viewsonic, Archos, and most importantly Samsung. The Samsung Galaxy Tab was Samsung's highly hyped entry into the tablet market. Its advertisements heavily pushed the idea of the Tab's 7 inch screen fitting into the back pocket of some incredibly well endowed pants. It was mostly well recieved as the competition for it was mainly some Chinese knock off and the Apple iPad. But for some ludicrous reason, the Galaxy Tab is priced at 500 dollars with a data contract from Sprint or Verizon. Wheras the iPad is the same price for a larger screen. (At time of writing the Tab has not yet released in its Wifi only version(Still expected to be priced at $500))

For a time the Galaxy Tab was and technically still is the king of the Android Tablet Market. But on October 26th, Barnes and Nobles announced the next iteration of their Nook line, The Nook Color. It did away with the e-ink screen in favor of a 7 inch, 600 by 1024 pixel capacitive touch screen. It's only buttons: Power, Volume +/-, and the n shaped home button. But most importantly? It ran a customized version of Android 2.1.

Was B&N aware of just what they were releasing?

There are no Android based devices that do not have "root*". Even when the manufacturer of other devices had placed restrictions, chips, potential self destruct, etc, etc. The Device gets rooted either which way.

With a 7 inch screen, Wifi, chips from the same line as those in the Droid X and Droid 2, it looked like the hacking community had just found its new favorite toy.

On November 29th, nearly two weeks after the November 16th ship date, the Nook Color was rooted successfully by a man named pokey9000 (not acting alone of course, but he's the most prominent and his name is the easiest to remember XD)

All of a sudden an e-reader just became a really cheap tablet. And a damn good one at that. I've lost the desire to read much of anything but psychology textbook chapters and the old fiction books I keep on my shelves. But I made the trek out on the 26th to return an Ipod Touch I recieved for a Nook Color. Yes, it was snowing. No, I'm sane.

On it's stock firm ware, the Nook Color is an ok device. It has a simple web browser, a chess game, Pandora, sudoku game, and access to Barnes and Nobles ebook library. It also has a LendMe tool to share book with other Nook Color users. The UI is comprised mostly of small book covers which populate your home screens. Though you cannot pinch to zoom in the included browser, you can pinch to zoom the book covers in some sort of strange mishap on B&N's part.

That's it. The Browser has no flash but access to Youtube's Mobile site. The Music playing app is ok at best. It can play videos too, but thats really half baked as well. The reading? It's nice I guess. I'd take an e-ink screen over it for sure but it's a nice attempt I guess.

Physically the device is heavy enough in terms of devices go. It does have some sort of heft to it. I'm not sure if thats intentional or if it's due to the components of the device. The buttons feel strong and have a nice click to them. The entire exterior sans the touchscreen area is made out of a soft touch plastic material. Totally better than glossy plastic which gets fingerprints all over it.

An interesting design choice of B&N is on the lower left corner there is a small sort of hook space that B&N sells accessories and charms for. It's beyond me as to why this was included, but its a unique design choice and I don't think I'd part with it given the opportunity.

On the standard firmware, the Nook Color's battery life without wifi on is about 8 hours. I'd say thats a good estimate b/c I didnt spend much time with the standard firmware.

Boring. Barely worth the 20 bucks extra that was used to cover tax.

But let's be realistic. If you're reading this you know me. I didn't buy this to read books. I got it to hack some shit. At about 8:30 PM after getting home at 6:30 PM, I successfully rooted my Nook Color after some mishaps with a rather small borrowed micro SD card and a very old micro sd card adapter. (Note: Dont try to write an image thats 121 MB to a 120 MB microsd card XD)

Whoa.

I loaded the Android Market application, I loaded in a new launcher, I loaded in Angry Birds, and ironically, I loaded in Kindle too. A few snips, tweaks, live wallpapers, and apps later, I was running a fully stocked Android Tablet.

I can send IM's, play games, read my mail, read news articles, edit documents, listen to radio, see constellations in the sky with Google Sky Map, I can print documents with PrinterShare, play Gameboy games with Gameboid. And that's only the beginning. I'm connecting to my server from a device only meant to read books, editting images with Adobe Photoshop Express, drawing with Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile. This little 7-inch tablet has skewed the line for me between a computer and a tablet. Sure I cant compile code on it yet but with what I can do so far, thats really all that's missing.

Physically nothing changes of course, but the battery life interestingly can be improved throught the usage of a strange trick. For some reason Android is not meant to be run on devices other than phones and as of such there are some lost in translation mistakes. By checking the power usage of the device you will more than likely find that you have a "phone" running in the background. It is taking up power and it can be disabled. Which of course will bump up your battery life.

I personally can get about a days use if I go OD and start Angry Birding like there's no tomorrow.

But I've heard reports that the battery can go 2 days sometimes even 3 with milder usage and no wifi thanks to this trick. According to someone on the XDA forums the battery draw of the device while in standby and with wifi off is 0.02 % which he calculated to result in a 5000 hour battery life. Real? Totally not but that doesnt mean the Nook Color's battery life is bad at all.

But of course having to hack a device to get some form of functionality is not without its downsides. The Google Earth app's opening page is not in full screen (only app so far that isn't), there are no physical back or menu buttons, so sometimes you are stuck in a place that cannot be exited without resorting to a software keyboard replacement. And of course you just might learn a bit about linux terminal, but I'm not sure if thats such a bad thing.

What I will say about the Nook Color is this: It's a great buy if you are willing to hack it and deal with some glitches. Keep in mind, it's only been hacked for about a month. So far, there are plain as in jane versions of Android being developed for the Nook Color. The device is slated to recieve an update containing the Android market from B&N this month, and Cyanogen (a famous modder who creates ROMs for Android devices) has placed the Nook Color on his to-do list. For 250 dollars, I'd say for getting actual work done, this is WAY better than an Ipod Touch. A regifted one at that XD Thanks Dad!

*Root is the most powerful user of a system. In the Android world, this typically means that the person is able to increase functionality of their Android Devices and run programs or tasks or replace files as the highest user in the land.

The Internet Finally Violates NPOV

2010-12-21T10:17:00.000-05:00

For those who do not know I spend a good portion of my time as an editor on Wikipedia. One of the core policies that all editors must keep in mind and enforce in their writing is NPOV, or neutral point of view. The policy states that all sides of the topic should be covered with due weight. Nothing should be given preferential treatment over something else. I particularly like this policy because it is a good policy to abide by outside of Wikipedia in real life. No matter what the topic, you should make sure to get all sides and not close out one particular subsection. Unfortunately, the FCC is going to violate this policy at some point today. The commission is planned to vote on a set of rules governing net neutrality at some point in the afternoon. Net neutrality is the policy that internet service providers charge a single uniform fee for providing their services, and that you are not charged more for visiting one website than another site. By violating this policy, Verizon or some other ISP could easily make a deal with Time Warner so that users are charged less for browsing AOL Mail then they are GMail or other online email client.

The primary reason companies are so dead set against network neutrality because it means a profit for them in the long run. But other than this, it is because they are scared. Politicians and corporate hotheads alike are scared of the Internet. The net is the one thing in this world that, up to this point, has remained free and open. You can browse any site that you want, for any length of time, and do anything you want. There are few limitations on Internet activity assuming what you are doing is legal. Such a concept is frightening to many people because it creates organized chaos. Take the recent WikiLeaks scandal: because of lack of control on the Internet, thousands of confidential government documents were leaked to the public. From a business perspective this could mean disaster, so being able to herd users into company-approved sites and making sure only the best content makes it to the consumer is awesome for corporations. Sound familiar? It is the same realm of control that Apple has over the App Store: only the best apps that fit company policy make it to the consumer.

While the corporate side of this situation may seem bright and cheery, all of this is at the cost of the consumer. You no longer have a choice of what sites you can browse. Sure you can still go wherever you want, but now it costs you money, a serious deterrent. And god forbid if your own website butts up against a big corporation.Visitor counts will drop so fast you won't even have time to pick up the phone and call your local ISP. Many even go as far to categorize it as a direct violation of the First Amendment. Freedom of speech used to mean you can say whatever you want; now it means you can say as much as your visitors can afford. The implications this will have are unimaginable. A company will be limited by how big a deal they can make with ISPs, rather than how much effort they put into getting their product or service out there.

The saddest part is that politicians are succumbing t corporate demands rather than taking initiative and doing what's right. Even worse is that the FCC and President Obama have the nerve to designate this as a success! Why? Because the rules that were designed to throw neutrality out the door were cleverly designed to look neutral, but in reality loopholes and other tools were used in all the right places as to satisfy the big corporate voices that are actually behind the new rules. Unless the proposed rules change drastically by the end of th day today, we are facing the biggest compromise of civil liberties since Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in the civil war. For once in American history, free speech has fallen to the power of of the purse.

Business as Usual: My Journey with Chrome OS (Part 2)

2010-12-20T10:18:00.000-05:00

Google Chrome OS, the cutting-edge cloud-based operating system that runs only a web browser, is making its debut in Google's pilot program that tens of thousands of users have signed up for. So far Google has shipped approximately 14,000 netbooks to users across the country, and nobody is keeping quiet about it. As always, there are those with good reviews, bad reviews, and pragmatically neutral reviews. In my own opinion, I fall into that neutral category. I realize that Chrome OS has its limitations (some of which I will tell you about in this post), but it also has many opportunities of success. Google Chrome OS is a little bit ahead of its time, but it is way to early to judge what will happen with it, and what the public will decide to do with it.

The primary limitation of Google Chrome OS is the fact that people are just not read to go cloud. While people like myself may embrace Google Docs with much joy, there are people out there who have not even heard of OpenOffice, let alone online alternatives to Microsoft Word. However, the fact the most used program on a computer is probably the web browser, and that Chrome OS can get you on that web browser in mere seconds, is bound to attract customers, and as more and more companies and services move online, the idea of a completely online computer will become more and more realistic. Before I get to Chrome OS itself, I just have to point out one of the more amusing arguments against Chrome OS I have heard. Moe than one person has expressed a sentiment that Chrome OS will fail because it runs Linux. They claim that the problems with Linux, primarily compatibility issues, will hinder the user experience on a Chrome Notebook. Such arguments are blatantly fallacious. Whether Linux can run Microsoft Outlooks or any such program is irrelevant on an operating system specifically made only to run a web browser. Linux is actually the best choice base for Chrome OS because the high customizability of the platform is what allows Google to even make Chrome OS in the first place.

But moving on to the netbook itself. For those who do not know I am an senior in high school in New York City, so my usage of the Chrome Notebook is slightly different from other consumers. Last Friday and today I took my Chrome Notebook to school and wrote down all of my notes and homework, including math class, using the netbook. The experience left a lot to be desired, but overall was exciting and even seemed to make my school day more interesting than it usually is. Writing notes and equations in Google Docs was simple and easy, and startup and shutdown was not a problem in between classes since Chrome OS seamlessly sleeps and wakes up when you open and close the lid of the netbook. You would think constructing equations in Google Docs would be tough to deal with, but the equation editor in Google Docs supports LATeX, an easy to learn typesetting language. I cannot say how easy it would be to work with in higher math classes, but for my high school calculus class everything was satisfactory.

The main problem you will run into when working with the Chrome Notebook is the lack of right click. The trackpad does not have right click abilities, so to conjure up any context menu you must hold down the Alt key and then left click, and even then the trick does not work half of the time. It has not completely hindered my use of the operating system, since most websites do not use right click, but in certain situations, such as spell check in Google Docs, it becomes cumbersome to use.

What I really love about the Chrome Notebook, though, is its fast startup time. I talked about it before, but as time went on it became apparent exactly how amazing it is to have your laptop start in less than ten seconds (or less than one second if it is waking up from sleep). Rather than press the power button and get some coffee as everything loads, you simply open the lid and you are instantly on the Internet. Conversely, being able to sleep by closing the lid and shut down by holding the power button for about a second makes it easy to pack up and go without being held up by a lengthy shutdown process. Even better is the fact that all your tabs and work will be saved, allowing you to pick back upi where you started without reopening your tabs.

If you consider yourself a busy person, then Chrome OS will be useful for you. While it is true that many people are just not ready to go online, whether beit is because they are hesitant or because they just do not know how, the elimination lf latency that comes with the Chrome Notebook is a powerful feature, and though there are quite a few minor bugs, it is nothing that cannot be worked out by Google. It cannot be said how much success the Chrome Notebook will see; it all has to do with what strategies Google uses and how much people are willing to trust Google, but an entirely online computer is not an unrealistic concept anymore, and it is only a glimpse of what generations to come will be using as their personal toys. Twenty years ago, nobody would have guessed that the Internet would catch on so quickly, and yet again we are presented with a unique concept that people are doubint gwill catch on. I have faith in Google and in cloud computing in general, but we will just have to wait and see if this is jsut a temporary fad or a major revolution in personal computing.

A Day in the Life: My Journey with Chrome OS (Part 1)

2010-12-17T11:30:00.006-05:00

When one of my friends from school got a CR-48 from Google and I did not, I almost freaked. Everybody heard about it all day how they didn't send one of the biggest Google fans on Staten Island their new, cutting-edge netbook in the cloud. However, the gods of Mountain View must have been listening because mine came in the next day. The new device, which runs only a web browser and uses web applications alone to simulate a user experience, is truly the final step into cloud computing that everybody has been waiting for. In this series of posts, I hope to give some insight on this new device to those not fortunate enough to have gotten one, and maybe help you decide whether living in the cloud will be right for you when 2011 comes around and these things go retail.

Google Chrome OS was first announced in July of 2009, and since then has been in the closet, so to say, as it reached maturity. An operating system entirely online is a new concept, and it took quite a bit of effort on Google's part to get it just right. Ever since the debut of netbooks and smart phones, people have been going mobile, and an operating system that fits into this trend is only a natural future for a world that is always betting busier. As with Google Chrome, Google's speedy web browser, the operating system is open source. Based on Linux, the idea was to look at cloud computing from a new aspect: rather than just storing your data in the cloud, why not actually live in the cloud itself? Why was it not feasible for somebody to spend their entire experience with a computer in a web browser when this is pretty much the case anyway? Furthermore, such an operating system would still have to have that trademark Google experience: simple, secure, and intuitive. And, of course, we cannot forget that more time online equals more online advertising, and obvious motivation since 99% of Google's revenue is from advertising. At this point in time, Google has almost finished its new product, and is not distributing it to beta testers before it is sold to the public. For more information on recent Chrome OS developments, see my previous post on the topic.

Not my pic, by the way. Next post I'll have more to show.

Well, let's get the suspense out of the way and straight to what you came here to read. As of the writing of this post, I have spent a mere five or six hours with the CR-48, so I cannot tell you much, but what I have experienced so far has been exactly as I expected. Like promised, the computer boots in about ten seconds, and in another ten you're logged on. Even before that, turning on the computer is simpler than ever. If for some reason you find pressing the power button to be confusing, the netbook actually powers up automatically when you open the lid, even if it was off to begin with. It is literally an open and go experience, and Google was successful in making the journey online quick and easy. When you boot up for the first time, Google asks you to connect to WiFi, log in, take a quick photo, and agree to the EULA. This makes your account the owner of the computer so you essentially have superuser control over all of the settings. After that Google Chrome pops up and everything is just like on your desktop or laptop.

Unlike a standard computer, there are no local applications, so everything must be done online. The operating system comes preinstalled with basic apps such as Gmail, Google Talk, a ScratchPad, among other utilities, and hundreds if not thousands of more apps are easily installable from the Chrome Web Store, which is just a click away. If you already have apps on your desktop computer then the process is even easier. With Google Chrome's built in synchronization of extensions and preferences, everything begins syncing the instant you log in. Overall it took about five minutes to have fully customized the entire computer, and everything was working just about flawlessly.

In my opinion, the most important aspect of this platform is the built-in 3G. What would an internet computer be if it did not have internet absolutely all of the time. Chrome OS makes it easy to activate and use Verizon 3G. All that is required is entering some billing information and you are all set up. This is important because one of the biggest fears of a computer user entirely on the internet is if their signal dies, and they are stranded without any remedy or solution. Situations like these can even result in catastrophic results, depending on the circumstances. Google has made a deal with Verizon so you can get a certain amount of 3G internet for free, and after that you just sign up for a standard plan or pay as you go, whichever you prefer.

Well, it was love at first sight, and my first impression of the new netbook is rather awesome. Over the next few days I will be able to experiment with the system more, maybe find those hidden bugs that Google has made so hard to find, and maybe even discover an easter egg or two (really counting on that last one). But for now I must go, I have a cloud to attend to.

WikiLeaks Does Not Yield

2010-12-09T11:30:00.004-05:00

All hell has broken loose over the past couple of days as WikiLeaks, the non-profit media website whose sole mission is to release confidential government documents into the public domain. Criticism has been back and forth, one side claiming freedom of speech, the other pointing out how releasing confidential government documents effectively puts lives in danger. But the real situation now is that of WikiLeaks and supporters vs. commercial corporations. So far MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, and others have cut off WikiLeaks from using their services. What was the response? A massive and successful DDoS from WikiLeaks supporters that brought these websites, as well as the home pages of elected officials who have made statements against WikiLeaks, down to their knees.

Personally I do not condone what's going on over at WikiLeaks. I agree that there are times when freedom of speech must be expressed for the betterment of the people and society, but based on the context of the situation, I do not think this is what Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks has in mind. It has nothing to do with the actual content being released, but rather the apparent motives behind why the State Department wires were released. One source quotes Assange as explaining how he didn't send the confidential documents to the New York Times because he did not like how they were covering his organization and recent legal troubles. So you're telling me a guy who puts American lives in danger in the name of free speech is going to attempt to punish a newspaper for using their free speech against him. Assange does not care about free speech or anything related to the subject; he just believes that every government is corrupt, and is using these confidential wires to antagonize companies and government into what seems to be ensuing anarchy.

However, WikiLeaks is not the only party in the wrong here. MasterCard, Visa, and other companies should not be getting their feet wet in politics by banning WikiLeaks from their services. They can feed me all the bullshit they want on how WikiLeaks violates their Terms of Services, but what exactly has WikiLeaks done wrong that deserves complete expulsion from such basic commercial services as receiving donations? Sure they have distributed confidential government documents, but the government itself has yet to claim that this act is definitely illegal. In fact, the only legal trouble Assange has run into is an alleged sex crimes case, which is completely unrelated to his current endeavors. MasterCard and Visa are just trying to shield themselves from criticism from both WikiLeaks opposition and the United States government, but suspending WikiLeaks from their services without so much as a concrete reason (ToS is not a concrete reason) is just a sign that the political pressure is too much for them. People have expressed willingness to donate to WikiLeaks, and MasterCard and Visa are taking sides by not letting this happen.

But the most recent development to all of this has been Operation Payback. A group of crackers who go under the name Anonymous launched DDoS attacks on many major websites that have shown opposition to WikiLeaks. The attack was organized through LOIC, or Low Orbit Ion Cannon. The application was written in C# and was originally developed as a stress test to see if a network could handle a massive flow of TCP packets. However, it was quickly adapted for malicious purposes and, in this case, brought down the websites of Visa, MasterCard, Sarah Palin, and others.

Similar attacks have been used before by the Anonymous community against other controversial issues, so I am not surprised that something like this triggered such a massive attack. However, it seems like the crackers are the only people who have actually done something illegal, and their involvement in this chiefly political battle just amplifies a situation that does not need to be made larger. WikiLeaks is not an Internet problem, it is a government problem. Using DDoS to bring down Visa's website is going to have little bearing on their decision to reinstate service for WikiLeaks. At the end of the day, this entire debacle has grown way out of proportion, and I would not be surprised if by tomorrow Twitter, who has recently suspended Operation Payback's account, is also under attack. We'll just have to wait and see.

Chromium Takes Big Steps

2010-12-07T19:19:00.000-05:00

First I want to apologize for my lack of activity here on TechLayers. Senior year has been rough so far and I have been struggling to keep up with both assignments and college applications. However, I have recently caught up on a lot of work so I should be able to improve my posting routine in the near future. Anyway, on to the post!

In what seems like a larger than life announcement, Google has declared a number of big steps forward in the development of both Google Chrome, Google's flagship browser, and Google Chrome OS, the cloud-based operating system that has been in almost secretive development for quite a while now. The post released information on updates in Google Chrome, the official opening of the Chrome Web Store, and an updated status of Chrome OS.

Probably the most significant achievement concerning Google Chrome is its usage. More than 120 million users are now using Chrome, up from 70 million as previously reported. This significant increase in usage shows that many users are switching over from Internet Explorer and Firefox to use Google's lightning fast browser that incorporates a number of features that other browsers still seem to be lacking. While Firefox still has an edge on diversity of extensions (though that gap is closing quickly), Chrome is overall a more secure and faster browser due to its V8 JavaScript engine and tab sandboxing. The latest updates to Chrome, which can be accessed through the Canary build channel, include instant page loading as you type in the address bar as well as an overhaul of V8.

Also announced was the opening of the Chrome Web Store. Previously "apps" have found their domain on smart phones and other mobile devices. The concept of the "app", which has come to be loosely defined as a software application with an intuitive user interface that is easily accessible via some type of icon or launcher, originated on mobile devices most likely because the limited display and interface required a simpler than usual UX to help consumers use the device without much trouble or difficulty. With the Chrome Web Store, that idea of the install and play app has spread to the desktop computer, specifically the browser. A first look of the store shows a standard extension installation interface with categories on the left and whatnot. Each application can be installed by clicking one button, and then confirming the installation when Chrome prompts. The store already has seemingly hundreds of apps ranging from Tweetdeck for social networking to Sounds Around Town, a Sesame Street-based toddler game. A lot of the apps are simply web pages packaged into an app, meaning when you launch the app it just brings you to the web page. While this may seem pointless to put something already readily accessible into an app, the transformation from URL to installable app is big in terms of user interface. Rather than typing in the address or opening a bookmark, the site becomes an icon alongside the rest of the apps, making it even easier to access and use than ever before. It is really the concept of an "app" more than anything else that makes this idea of apps on the desktop so revolutionary. Other apps are more complex and are somewhat like extensions in that static web pages are downloaded to the Chrome browser.

What the Chrome Web Store really is going to have an effect on, though, is the whole cloud computing movement that Google has been so focused on in essentially all of its products and services. More people are moving online and more people are going mobile. We no longer live in a world where the base station is your only station. We start at home on our laptop or desktop, move to mobile during the commute, log on to another laptop or desktop during the day, maybe use a public computer or a friend's computer at some point, all to return to home. And for this routine to be productive, there needs to be a link between all of our stations, all of our portals to the world. That's where Google comes in. The Chrome Web Store takes that firs step in linking our computers by allowing apps, extensions, themes, and personal settings to be synced wherever Chrome resides. Pushing our information and data to the cloud provides a central point to which everything else can attach to. With the new app store pen, i think we can expect to see a big spike in cloud computing and mobile applications (as well as Chrome usage).

The other big announcement Google made was the Chrome Notebook pilot program. After a year or so of development, Google says it's ready to get some feedback on Chrome OS. Currently they have a signup form for users who wish to become pilot users and test Chrome OS on an actual notebook installation. This has been one of the biggest steps by Google in terms of getting Chrome OS out there and actually moving it to the public realm. Google also says that Chrome notebooks will be available next year for sale by Samsung and Acer. Chrome OS paired with the Chrome Web Store will make the cloud computing movement impossible to stop, if it has not already reached that point already.

The big features of Chrome OS as advertise by Google are speed, sync, and security. Since Chrome OS is only a web browser with a few necessary additions, it is only natural that speed with increase significantly over a traditional notebook, which runs many other programs and background processes. This is especially true since Chrome has process sandboxing and other features that allow it to speed past other browsers. Sync is obvious as that is the core point around which Chrome OS is made: pushing computing into the cloud completely. Your entire experience on a Chrome Notebook is on the cloud, from your settings and bookmarks to apps and extensions. If your Chrome Notebook were to be completely destroyed in some horrific accident, simply logging onto another computer would restore all your data and settings. And last but not least comes security. Again, sandboxing helps to promote security in the browser by separating each tab into its own sort of domain. However, Google tauts a number of other features that also make the Chrome Notebook more secure than your standard computer. For starters, Verified Boot tests to see if you computer has been tampered with, and immediately restores from a backup if it has been. Chrome OS also has a "guest mode", friends and other users can browse in incognito mode without having access to your email and other private information.

I wish Google luck on their journey into the cloud, and I hope there are many willing to follow that path to what seems like a more productive and secure world. (I also hope they pick me for the pilot program so I can see first hand what is in store for us next year.) The future is here, and it is in the cloud.

New v. Old - You Tell Me

2010-11-13T22:47:00.002-05:00

Currently you are at http://blog.layersoftech.com. Now try going to http://www.layersoftech.com and tell me which you like better. That is all.

Google and Facebook Slapfight

2010-11-09T20:28:00.000-05:00

The war on data portability has begun. First some background: over the past twenty-four hours, Facebook and Google have been in a major slap fight that could ultimately lead to a shift in the paradigm of social networking itself. Our story begins about one week ago, when Google shut off its Contacts API for Facebook. In other words, you can no longer import your Gmail contacts into Facebook. Google claimed their reasoning for this action was why should Google let Facebook import its users if Facebook is not doing the same for Google. Their reasoning is sound; data portability is one thing, but stealing users in such a unilateral manner and not expecting the other side to play hard ball is ridiculous. However, Facebook was not going to take this sitting down, so they made a quick hack and used the ability to export your Gmail contacts as a CSV file to continue contact imports. When Google responded with some harsh remarks, Facebook rebuked, "Openness doesn't mean being open when it's convenient."

Quite frankly, Facebook is just bitching because Google turned off contact imports for them. How could Facebook expect Google to keep this service on if Facebook is not giving back? Google may be all for being open, but we are still dealing business here. As much as you want to wave the banner of openness and helping the user, we are still in a cutthroat capitalist economy. Facebook knows that, which is why they are stealing from Google so readily. The worst part is that if Facebook had just worked with Google instead of against like they are doing now, the social world would be a much better place. But instead, Facebook's stubbornness is going to drive a new era of data protectionism. I would not be surprised if, in the near future, it is impossible to move your information between services because of this war. But Google is not exactly in the right here either. Though on the outside it may seem like shutting off the Contacts API for Facebook was because of data portability, in reality it is because Google is competing with Facebook, pure and simple. And if Google continues to make these vengeful moves against Facebook in the name of openness, they are going to ruin the reputation they have worked so hard to get.

The most hilarious part, though, is a comment that Mike Vernal from Facebook left as a comment on a TechCrunch article about the debacle. The comment says that Facebook's "policy has been consistent". Well that's an outright lie. He goes on further to say,

Email is different from social networking because in an email application, each person maintains and owns their own address book, whereas in a social network your friends maintain their information and you just maintain a list of friends. Because of this, we think it makes sense for email applications to export email addresses and for social networks to export friend lists.

Essentially he's saying that in email you own your friends' information while on Facebook you do not, which makes no sense. Sure on Facebook your friends maintain their own information, but it is the same with email: everybody kind of has their own email account. In essence, your address book is the email version of your friend list, and just as your address book identifies people with email addresses, your friend list identifies people with a Facebook profile. Though the uses of email and social networking services may be very different, there are some things that are fundamentally the same, and all Google is asking is the ability to find friends in your Facebook "address book", since Facebook lets you find your friends using Gmail. They are not asking to give away phone numbers or personal information, just a way to find people on one website through a connection made in another.

And to top off everything, Vernal even has the nerve to "hope that Google turns back on their API and doesn’t come up with yet another excuse to prevent their users from leaving Google products to use ones they like better instead". Not only does Facebook ask Google to restart their parasitic relationship, but they assume that their users like Facebook better than Gmail, which, by the way, is a completely different service than Facebook last time I checked. Google better come up with a good comeback to that, because Facebook needs a reality check on their reputation, or they are going downhill for good. At this point, we can only sit and wait to see how things pan out, but a word of advice: start exporting your information, because you might not be able to do so for much longer.

The Web Was Never Safe, But We're Realizing It Now

2010-10-26T11:30:00.005-04:00

It is generally agreeable that the Internet is not a very secure place. Some of our most confidential information is sent flying across the world in almost plain sight of everybody else, not to mention there are people actively at work trying to get that information. The only real defenses we have against this insecurity is encryption and permissions. Even antivirus programs are nothing more than scanners that alert you after you have been compromised. This has been almost the axiom of Internet communication since the beginning, but apparently we are only truly getting a sense of this problem right now.

Recently, Eric Butler, a freelance software developer from Seattle, released a proof-of-concept Firefox extension called Firesheep. The extension sniffs out cookies from your browser session and uses it to gather information from various "secure" websites. Web applications as popular as Facebook can be easily compromised by simply stealing the session id for the user, whether it be through the Firesheep extension or interception of the network data as it goes to the user. As Butler himself says, "Facebook is constantly rolling out new "privacy" features in an endless attempt to quell the screams of unhappy users, but what's the point when someone can just take over an account entirely?" It is quite astounding how it took this long to realize exactly how at risk we are in the current world of computer security, and the worst part is that this is entirely caused by corporate and consumer ignorance.

Take Facebook as an example. Facebook does not encrypt their login page, so from the start your password is being sent unencrypted across an open network connection. Once you log in, the connection is still not encrypted, and authentication of the client is only determined through a session id stored as a cookie in your browser. (In case you did not know, that cookie is transferred unencrypted to and from your computer as your session takes place.) All Facebook would have to do is enforce SSL encryption on its site and the entire service would be ten times as secure, and the solution is not exactly difficult it implement with the human and computer resources Facebook has in its control. I apologize for singling out Facebook, though, as there are numerous other sites with the same problem. So why then do our current systems continue to remain so secure? The answer comes in two parts: the company and the user.

SSL encryption is costly. It uses CPU time and takes up more server load than normal. It also requires more human resources to try and work encryption into the core of the service. In other words, more money spent. A company does not want to spend more money than it has to. Furthermore, more server load means less users served in a given amount of time. In other words, less money earned. So to sum it all up, encrypting your website means more money spent and less money earned: not exactly the most exciting feature to add to your service. So why even add security features in the first place if they just cause pain and misery? Well, the sole motivation for a company to add security features is that they can advertise these security features in order to bring in more users, and more users equals more money (in most cases). So looking at it from a business perspective, you only need to implement as many security features as you can advertise to your users. Unfortunately for everybody, SSL encryption does not fall into this category.

People are ignorant of computers. They do not care what SSL encryption is, what SSH tunneling means, or even what the difference between Firefox and Internet Explorer is, as long as they can access the services they want to and do it in a quick, efficient, and seemingly secure manner. This fact is never going to change, nor would anybody want it to change. No matter what device you take, a computer, a screwdriver, an iPod, even a pen, there are going to be a group of people who make them and a group of people who use them, with some overlap in between. Trying to get everybody into that first group would be like trying to get everybody who writes to make their own pens. Not only is it ridiculous, but it is counter-productive to progress. Anyway, so many people do not care what encryption is, as long as the website they are going to says they are "secure" and "private". Other good key words are "fast" and "free". So since SSL encryption does not matter to the user, the sole motivation for a company to implement it has just been extinguished. It is the combination of corporate greed (to use a more blunt term) and consumer ignorance that is sending our Facebook information into Firefox extensions.

Unfortunately, things are not changing anytime soon on the corporate side, so it is up to the user to be aware and protect himself or herself. Believe it or not, Facebook actually does have an encrypted site; it just does not load it by default for the reasons aforementioned. The same applies for many other websites. So using a browser extension like HTTP Everywhere will force you to use the secure versions of the site, thus protecting your information. In addition, you would probably benefit from a service like LastPass. Rather than have one password for everything, have random passwords for individual sites and lock them under one master password. This can save you from mass fraud like that faced recently by Louis Gray (sorry to call you our Louis, you were the only example I could find). And the most important thing of all: use common sense and stay awake. There is nothing more helpful to your security and privacy than just looking around and hearing what's going on. Combining these tools can hopefully drag you our of the horrible stockpile of plaintext data.

101 Ways to Layer Tech

2010-10-16T18:24:00.000-04:00

This is going to be short, and I'll probably get a more legitimate post out sometime this weekend, but this is the 101st post on TechLayers, an astounding achievement. I hope we still have some interested readers, and with any luck we'll get more in the future. Keep on blogging fellow social media people.

New Facebook Privacy: Good but Suspicious

2010-10-07T11:30:00.005-04:00

After much suspense and rumor, Facebook finally revealed what they have been in lock-down for at their event in Palo Alto. Other than the possible site redesign (as if the site has not been redesigned enough in the past year), a number of amazing features have been added, some of which should probably have been implemented months ago. The new Facebook now has a "download your information" feature, another enhanced privacy settings panel, and a new groups feature.

The download your information feature allows a user to download a ZIP file containing everything about them stored on Facebook. Rolling out to users today, you can download your information from the Account Settings menu. While this is all fine and well, why is Facebook doing this? The motive behind this new service is probably data portability, something Google and other companies have been preaching for a long time, but exactly why would anybody want data portability from Facebook? Google allows you to take your email and information off of Google because there is actually an alternative to their online services. Facebook, on the other hand, is not the same. Nobody is going to export their data off of Facebook and upload it onto MySpace, and this is ignoring the fact that your information file is probably not in a format that can be easily parsed by other sites. (What's really funny is that the email client Facebook uses in their demonstration video is Gmail.) In my opinion, it looks as if Facebook is just looking to up their reputation in the face of major privacy concerns from their users. It should probably be noted that deleting your Facebook is still just as difficult as it was before.

The next item they added was an "enhanced" privacy panel. The new panel is actually useful because not only does it allow you to very easily remove numerous unwanted applications from your profile as well as block users and applications, but you can disable Facebook's instant personalization features, something that was very controversial just a couple of months ago. Furthermore, you can control what information games can use when personalizing your social networking experience. However, there are a number of suspicious features in the new privacy panel. Aside from the fact that you can only access it by clicking a small link in the lower left-hand corner of the main privacy panel, the wording in the panel is peculiar. Whenever you change your setting in favor of privacy, whether is be disabling instant personalization or removing applications, Facebook makes sure to present you with a confirmation box, explaining how disabling it will not give you the "richer, more connected experience" that you would get by sharing more of your information. It's almost as if Facebook is saying, here, now you can hide your information, but we really really do not want you to. So it is still is success that there are not more privacy features, but there is no sign Facebook is giving this control away willingly.

Finally, there is also a new groups feature. The new groups is an exact copy of aspects from Diaspora. They allow you to post status updates, photos, etc. to a select group of friends. It's like you have your own set of social sub-networks that you can choose what to post where. This is probably the biggest advance Facebook has made during their lock-down, because having this amount of control over who sees what is sort of the final step toward complete privacy on a social network. The first step was controlling what the public can see, the second step was controlling what your friends and friends of friends can see, and now you can control what your individual groups of peers can see. Facebook really deserves an applause for this, but considering Google Buzz and Diaspora both already have this feature, I have to say Facebook is a little late, but better late than never.

Facebook has definitely made a step in the right direction. With new privacy controls and supposed data portability, it seems they are finally responding to the months of privacy concerns. And I definitely cannot wait to see how users react when we get that new Facebook design that is coming soon. However, I do not believe their motives for these changes are altruistic, and I am still wary of what Facebook has in store for us.

Google TV: Friend or Foe

2010-10-06T11:30:00.002-04:00

Google recently made a big announcement about Google TV. The new service Google offers is similar to Apple TV, except with Google. Sony or Logitech will build the device (more on that later) and Google will give the software. This combination will allow television users to have apps, internet access, and many other features that have previously been denied from the living room screen. All of this is part of the big evolution from static unilateral viewing to dynamic content and social media, and the television set is simply next in line. But is Google's new product "Google" enough to really make an impact, or at least more of an impact than Apple TV did, and what will it mean for the future?

Personally, I am not sure what to think of all of this. *gasp* Did Tyler Romeo just say he was unsure of a product made by Google? I must admit I am a little conservative with the idea. Television has always been for watching shows and computers have always been for dynamic content, or at least in my generation. Google hopes to bring the computer to the TV by putting apps on your television, but wouldn't it make more sense to bring the TV to the computer with TV tuners and software that would interact with them? It has the same effect, except now you do not need a separate computer, and everything is in the same place. Either way, Google is not going to change their mind now. They have deals with many companies and have a lot riding on Google TV, so I can only imagine what the future has in store.

Google TV is definitely going to make a big impact on consumer television, which is not as much as I can say for Apple TV. Similar to how Microsoft bundled their operating system with various computer manufacturers, Google is not making the hardware in this deal. You can get a Google-powered Sony TV, or an add-on box from Logitech, and there are probably more to come. This key marketing strategy that Apple somehow never seems to comprehend is definitely going to add to a larger impact. Furthermore, Google's software seems to have more functionality, a lot more functionality. Other than the obvious built-in TV show search engine (what did we expect from a search engine company), the end-user gets full Internet capabilities and a sea of apps, many of which are specifically made for Google TV due to agreements between Google and media companies.

And I have to give mention to the fact that Google TV will, like Android, be open. Many people see this fact as somewhat trivial, but it makes a big difference. The gap between complete secrecy, getting a box in the mail knowing it will just work, and open-source, where many eyes even outside of Google will see the code and keep the user's best interest in mind, is quite significant. We can expect a plethora of opportunities to open up with an open platform. Now all we need to do is wait. Currently, Google, Sony, and Logitech all have their own sign-up lists for email updates. Google says we can expect Google TV to launch as early as next month.

Guest Author: Dr. Bessel, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Accept the Bullshit

2010-10-05T10:30:00.000-04:00

This post was written by my friend David Bessel, who has given permission to repost his article here.

Random thoughts that I think should be written down somewhere. Should be common sense to most.

Secondary education in America perpetually churns out jaded, aggressive people, instilled with the most condemnable values imaginable. We live in a society predicated on capitalism, a world where dogs eat other dogs alive. It's no longer a society of survival of the fittest, but survival of the most unscrupulous, the most vicious, the most inhuman. True talent that has the ability to alter the world continues to live in the shadows of the brutal and shrewd. Glorified bullshit is prioritized over true progress.

The root of the problem is education. From an early age, we're groomed to fit into the archetype of the model citizen of corporate America. We're instilled with the idea that all it's about is being the best: getting the highest grade, scoring in the 99th percentile on standardized tests, winning meaningless contests, all for the common goal of padding up our resumes and getting into a prestigious institution, where we can continue our ultra competitive ways. Doesn't really get better for graduate school or our first jobs.

I've bought into this doctrine for 17 years of my life. My mind has been thoroughly molded by society. Being the best student, scoring the highest score on a test has been the purpose of my existence from an early age, just so that I can get the opportunity to continue being a complete douchebag in some yuppie oligarchic institution. I sacrificed my humanity for a few (relatively) meaningless test scores. And for what? I am not a better person for it. If I get into Yale, I will not be a better person. I'm not a particularly more intelligent person because of this cut throat competition; in fact, the courses offered in school are narrow and specific and don't offer a particularly vast wealth of knowledge.

I wasted three years of my high school career fretting and stressing and growing into a monstrous person in the process. The past few weeks have been indicative of how horrible I've grown as a person, but I don't feel like I'm wholly to blame. I can't even blame the thousands of like-minded students vying to get into the same top colleges I'm applying to. There is something fundamentally wrong with education and society as a whole. Anything that forces us to compromise our values and lose sight of who we are as people cannot be a positive force in society.

What's done is done. I've wasted three years of my high school career in panic and sleep deprivation and adhering to general douchebaggery. But unfortunately it's a fixture of society that I cannot help or change. My mind is too far in to be saved. For those that haven't been confounded by the machinery, save yourself while you can. It only gets worse from here.

E-Readers: Good or Bad?

2010-09-29T20:03:00.000-04:00

Recently, one of my friends wrote her college essay on the evils of the Kindle and other e-readers. Another one of my friends refused to even read it, stating e-readers are the future. Here I attempt to cover the whole argument.

Electronic reading material has covered much ground in recent years, to the point where traditional newspaper companies are worried they may eventually stop printing altogether. E-readers specifically are taking the physical, page-by-page book that almost every American has held at least once and turning it into a digital device, tantamount to how letters were transformed into email. Many are critical of this shift in paradigm, claiming the new generation is too connected and attached to technology. On the other hand, many welcome it with open arms, awaiting what the next breakthrough in electronic engineering will be. Both sides have their own arguments, and neither is fundamentally correct, but one thing is for sure: e-readers are not going away, and the consequences of their existence have only begun to make their presence felt.

There are numerous reasons why an e-reader evolution might become a handicap on our society. The most cited reason is the removal of textile and kinesthetic characteristics associated with the traditional book. E-readers do not give that turn-the-page feel, nor do you get the smell of ink or the feeling of breaking in a brand new binding. While all of these features may seem trivial, it is such features that entice children into reading in the first place, and without it I would not be surprised if, though I cannot cite specific scientific evidence, less and less children find joy in reading as more e-readers are sold. Another similar problem with e-readers is the ability to lend books. This social interaction that is vital for book lovers is forbidden with e-readers, for obvious reasons. And not to mention the fact that e-readers are not exactly biodegradable as books are.

However, there are many other good reasons to get an e-reader. For one, people who get e-readers read more books. It is much easier to purchase books and even easier to carry them around, and this encourages people to read more. If that's not a clear cut reason to get an e-reader than I don't know what is. Furthermore, though this is in direct conflict with what I said before, e-books may also cause more children to read, since the kids of this generation are obsessed with technology and everything related to it. And to take a venture to the other side of the publishing process, it is much easier for authors to get published with e-books, since no money is spent on printing. And all of these advantages have only to do with personal reading. The average e-reader owner would also be able to carry a number of other texts, all without additional weight. This means students can carry their textbooks without weighing down their backpacks, teachers can instantly refer to textbooks without searching through a library of text, and professionals can refer to handbooks and reference manuals whenever necessary during the work day. It should also be noted that e-readers are not bad for your eyes, that is simply a myth.

E-readers have their advantages and disadvantages, similar to almost any controversial product that has been released in previous years. Personally, never having loved the textile feel of books like others do, I like the e-reader revolution. More people read more books, and you have an entire library at your fingertips. Furthermore, I cannot tell you how many times I looked for the Find button while reading a book. However, the anti-e-readers still have their case. Who will win the battle? We cannot say for sure, but e-readers are probably not disappearing anytime soon, especially with all the money booksellers are putting behind it. Now we just sit back and wait: is the pen mightier than the e-reader?

Diaspora sucks!

2010-09-22T19:17:00.000-04:00

With Facebook on the rise, Diaspora recently decided to take the next step and release its alpha stage source code to developers. Diaspora is an open-source social networking project that intends to tackle the evil that supposedly is centralized social networking. The program breaks apart your standard social network into seeds. Each seed is a separately hosted entity, and every user has the ability to add friends from different seeds just by entering their email-address-like name. Due to the many privacy issues Facebook has been experiencing, the creators behind Diaspora hope to bring justice to social networking and take down Facebook (or at least make a point doing so). While this is a very noble effort, just one look at the final product and my hopes begin to sink.

First and foremost, I need to get my own person resentment out of the way. I hate Ruby on Rails (though I have to give them credit for using GitHub). I could explain exactly how the coddling of developers will eventually cause the downfall of traditional programming as we know it, but that is a holy war nobody would win, and I don't want to waste your time. (And I'm not the only one. I mean, what kind of language/framework combination is so laid back that the developers forget to protect against injection attacks!)

Diaspora's interface is simple. You can post, add friends, and upload photos. Yeah, that's about it. The simplicity is not the problem, though. How future features will be added is the problem. What about networks? Which seed will maintain ownership of a network, and how will duplicates be prevented? Oh, and there are no privacy settings. I understand that this is an alpha release, but you'd think that for a revolutionary program that is so focused on privacy and security there would at least be some basic settings. There is absolutely nothing. Furthermore, previously the creators of Diaspora said there would be GPG encryption. The only thing I see related to encryption is an Encryptor module in their source code, but it does not use GPG. These are just some of the things that should have been included in the program design since the beginning, but weren't. While you can always add more features as time goes on, there should at least be some compensation in early development that will allow for the insertion of these features.

Another major issue I see Diaspora facing in the near future should their program take off is seed competition. Since the program design is to essentially make separate Facebooks and just have them communicate between each other, there is going to be major carnage. I can foresee companies making their own seeds using proprietary software made to work with the Diaspora framework and then adding their own features to compete with seeds that have less funding. All Facebook needs to do is make their software compatible with Diaspora's communication protocol and the entire project pretty much fails.

Well, to tell the truth, we cannot assume what will become of Diaspora. However, the project is looking pretty much dead before it even started. Unless the developers can take all that money and somehow jump-start their project big time in the next couple of months, I doubt anything will come from Diaspora. However, hopefully this will serve as inspiration for future similar projects, because eventually the time is going to come when we will need to abandon Facebook.

Bing is new 2nd place Search Engine. Google goes Lol

2010-09-15T00:22:00.002-04:00

Apparently, based on a report released by the Nielsen Company, Bing has finally overtaken Yahoo as No.2 search engine.

Bing, the ever growing search engine, created by Microsoft is apparently growing in steam, though Google still leads the race with a considerable amount of leeway.

In all these search engine shenanigans, let us take a good long moment and remember the man that made the business: Jeeves

Farethewell, Yahoo and Ask. We had a blast. Not really.

There's No Place Like Home

2010-09-01T15:11:00.000-04:00

I do not care what anybody says about all this mobile business. Laptops, Android, whatever it may be, there is no place like home. Having not spent a single full day in my own home since August 8th, my desktop computer has been off for weeks. If not for my server, my room would have been dead silent, that omnipresent sound of spinning fans almost totally gone. This, of course, explains why I have not posted much during that time. But getting back to the point, I have never been away from home for this long, and it is a great relief to be back on the big screen. With school coming up fast, I have to end this post here, but trust me, everybody lauding mobile computing and oppressing the desktop has no idea what they are talking about until they have spent a month away from home, with no access to their beloved widescreen desktop computer.

Why Linux will never see the user base Windows or OSX recieves

2010-09-01T11:58:00.002-04:00

Linux. Some people think its a wild jungle cat. Some people think its a hacker's operating system called Lunix. And some know its got something to do with computers but don't know much else about it.

Well Linux is the term used to refer to a group of operating systems that are based on the Linux Kernel. With the kernel essentially being the central core of an operating system. Think "your brain." I'm not really going to go further into depth because if you're reading this you're following this blog you're more than likely well versed on the ideas of computers and their operating systems.

Linux is well known to be much more secure than Windows or OSX, and is also known to be highly customizable, being able to run on almost any hardware setup with little to no tweaks. It can also usually take full advantage of the hardware. Whereas Windows or OSX is limited to drivers and such, Linux users can tweak their installs to go deeper and further than those sissy drivers. Think: Non-Multi touch trackpad becomes Multi touch with a few tweaks.

Also due to its incredibly intelligent user base, there is almost never a virus developed for Linux because it would be like attempting to single-handedly wage a war against Spartan Warriors armed only with a basil plant.

Well! Linux sounds dandy! I should install it right now!

Hold your horses. Read the title again. I'm not trying to sell Linux to you but by all mean try out Ubuntu's Wubi installer if you're so inclined.

Linux inherently is incredulously confusing. There are hundreds of different distros of it. A distro of Linux is essentially another operating system. Each one specializes in something and each one does something better or worse. The ones that jump out of my head immediately are Ubuntu, BackTrack, Fedora, Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, and gOS. Each one is different from the other.

With the incredible saturation of distros, it makes it incredibly difficult to choose one. Especially when you don't know what they are or do. If all the developers of each distro could combine their efforts and create one solid competitor to Windows or OSX, it would be surely something I would give my computer to. I want to see a super Linux OS. Ubuntu's got a good shot at it, but there are components of BackTrack that I still need or have yet to see in Ubuntu or components of Fedora, etc.

Its just too much a learning curve to give Ubuntu the functionality that a user expects out of Linux.

I remember spending awhile trying to get a more robust Compiz GUI to run on Ubuntu. The whole Synaptics Package Installer just doesn't match the ease of a standard EXE installer or DMG. When is Linux going to see something similar to those? I'm not sure if Linux already has something similar, but I've never seen one and to be honest, it just really makes or breaks the deal for me.

Another issue I'd say are drivers for higher functionality. But thats more or less the need for me to get into monitor mode in my new laptop. Thats a post for another day.

Teen Blogging

2010-08-12T12:48:00.000-04:00

As new generations usher in the new decade, we find ourselves looking more and more toward children and teens to fill in the shoes of the big dreamers that just seemed to have disappeared. With the Internet still pretty much in full swing, one of the biggest outlets for teens is social networking. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter (more commonly the former) allows teens to connect with their friends, share photos, and communicate, all within the comfort of their desktop or laptop computer (not to mention mobile devices). However, one form of social expression, something that seems not to be associated as much with teens as it is other groups, is blogging. Whenever any of my friends think of blogging, they imagine either some big tech blogger, politician, or other figurehead writing posts about current events. However, blogging can sometimes be an essential unidirectional method of communication amongst teens, as it allows them to express themselves in longer more drawn out posts rather than the brief snippets you will find on Facebook and Twitter.

This week I have been in Baltimore, MD, participating in a teen art program called ArtsFest. While I am in the film and television group, I have been keeping a close eye on the creative writing and journalism group, who have been spending most of their time writing articles and, you guessed it, blogging. Even though these high school students are not writing about technology or politics, they still enjoy the blogging experience, and there are probably many more teens outside of this program who would enjoy blogging as well, but just have not been introduced to it. The reason blogging should be emphasized and encouraged amongst teens is simple: it's social writing. Writing itself is a form of expression that allows teens to express their emotions, organize their thoughts, and do something productive rather than talk with friends. But blogging is writing with a social aspect: you are speaking to a public audience, who can come back and comment on what you write, and even ReBlog. The social part of blogging not only makes it more interesting and appealing to teens, but also makes them take the process more seriously and thoughtfully than, say, writing in a diary or composing school essays. (And this ignores the fact that some teens might even decide to become professional bloggers and journalists as a result of their initial blogging experience.)

The problem with teens nowadays is that their forms of social communication have been shortened. Rather than call they text, rather then email they wall post. Many people would argue that this "shorter" form of communication is actually an improvement in efficiency, but it dramatically changes the actual experience of communication, that practice in expressing your thoughts to your peers. There are many teens that now do not know how to function in the real world because their pragmatic skills have been stunted by Facebook and the Internet. Blogging, however, reverses this effect, and brings back the long conversations and emails, while still retaining the technical and social aspect that draws in teens so easily. If teens were to blog more often, like myself and @holdenpage, I feel the adults would have more to look forward to once they pass the torch on.

Google Links Accounts? Not Really

2010-08-09T11:30:00.001-04:00

One feature many Google users have always demanded is the ability to link accounts. Not just forwarding email from a slave account to the master account, but intrinsically tying two accounts together, so that they could be used under one name, but still kept separate. Google attempted to answer our prayers a few days ago by implementing account linking. By heading to the My Account page and enabling multiple sign-in, you can log into other accounts that you own and "link" them to your account. Currently, the feature, according to Google, may not work for all accounts, and only works with certain services. But what exactly does it do? Does it allow you to have all your mail head to one account without forwarding? Does it let you combine all your calendars in one place?

The new multiple sign-in feature puts a drop-down button in the top right corner of the page, and lets you click on different email addresses to switch between accounts. That's it. Something like that could be developed in JavaScript or made as a Google Chrome add-on. I understand that Google's account management infrastructure is probably infinitely complicated, but why tempt us with such a tease? I will admit that the new feature may be useful for the occasional user with three or more Google accounts who absolutely needs to switch between accounts in short periods of time, but considering Google Apps accounts are not supported by multiple sign-in (yet?), there are probably not many people that fit that description.

When Gmail was released, it caused a paradigm shift that changed email forever. Rather than open six different email accounts, all for different types of email, people merged their identity under one address, using filters and labels to sort through all that trash. Because of this, it makes absolutely no sense to maintain two separate accounts. The only reason you might want to do that is if you really need a separate address, such as if you maintain a business, but usually there is no need for an entirely separate account. Therefore, it only makes sense that Google should have a way to actually merge accounts, allowing people to maintain multiple addresses if they need it, while keeping the simplicity and abstraction. Unfortunately, it is not likely such a gift will come soon, and hopefully Google will stop teasing me by getting my hopes up.

Google Wipes Out while Riding the Wave

2010-08-05T11:30:00.023-04:00

Google announced on Wednesday that they were pulling the plug and stopping development on Google Wave, the online collaboration service that was supposed to be the next generation of email. Unveiled to the public only a few months ago, the amazing product combines features of instant messaging, Twitter, email, and other communication mediums to create a single centralized collaboration environment that far outperforms the typical snail mail process. With features such as real-time collaboration, plugins and extensions, automatic spell-check, image slideshows, and a whole lot more, Google expected it to wow users as the next revolution in technology. However, while the product was popular among developers for sure, Google executives say production was halted due to lack of user interest and less user adopting than initially expected.

Users of Google Wave were most likely turned away from its revolutionary design and feature line because of its complexity and novelty. With everybody so used to traditional email, having the message in a single location rather than sending it back and forth was a paradigm change that many would not easily adopt to. The concept is very staggering, as a decentralized messaging service makes the product seem more like a forum than a collaboration platform. However, users do not realize that this is done on purpose. The ability to reply to any part of a message is a key part in allowing better communication, as it allows direct referencing to what a user is referring to. Furthermore, the ability to edit other people's messages was also a big turn off for some.

However, the primary reason Google Wave did not experience widespread adoption is stubbornness. Even if every person in the world understood the purpose of Google Wave and why it was ultimately superior to email, adoption would still be slow. People do not like to change. So to have even a few thousand or ten thousand people throw out the communication service they have known and loved for decades, just so Google can control their information and supposedly improve their lives, is a lot to ask. If Google really wanted to motivate users to switch from email to Wave, they would need one very important feature, something that was left out until very late in the development process and something that should have been emphasized more when Wave was released: backward compatibility. If you want people to switch from email to Wave, there needs to be a way to integrate Wave with email so users can still interact with any of their contacts who have not yet switched. While you can now add email addresses as participants to a wave, not many are aware of this feature, and that is why Google is not seeing user adoption.

Adding to that, Google did not seem to make a big deal out of Wave at all. Only those who watched the hour long Google I/O presentation really understood what was in the works here, and an even smaller amount were interested enough to actually use it. So while people may have been bidding thousands of dollars on Wave invites before it was released to the public, in reality nobody really knew what the service was, let alone what it was supposed to become. If Google had publicized the service more, gotten the word out, and got more companies and organizations involved in the revolution, there would have been a much bigger user adoption rate, and maybe the service would still be alive today.

If Google was really enthusiastic about Wave (like it is about Android), it would have gone to the ends of the Earth to ensure the service's success. Maybe there would have been an interface in Gmail that allowed you to transfer your contacts, etc. all over to Wave at once, so you could continue communicating as you normally would (this technique almost worked with Buzz if it had not been for the privacy issues). But this did not happen, and it is pretty obvious why. Wave does not have advertisements, therefore Google is not making profit off of it, so to have an entire team of engineers focus on a product that is not bringing in the dough, while at the same time Android is pushing its way to the top, is a bad business plan in Google's eyes, and they are right to an extent.

Personally, I am sad to here that development had stopped. Google Wave was a great service that really proved useful in those situations when email was not really enough, and I still use it a lot. Fortunately, Google will not pull down the service completely, at least for the time being, allowing existing users to continue doing what they do best: wave.

Yes, My iPod is Still Legal

2010-07-27T11:30:00.008-04:00

I believe the Library of Congress just pwned Steve Jobs. Apple and its omnipotent company powers have previously sought to prevent their end users from jail-breaking, a.k.a installing software other than that of Apple almighty, their iPhones, iPod touches, etc. This effort is not surprising with the amount of control Apple exhibits over both its users and developers. For some unknown reason, Apple must control everything, even if it means keeping everybody else out. However, the Library of Congress recently released a ruling that:

Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications, when they have been lawfully obtained, with computer programs on the telephone handset.

In other words, jail-breaking your iPhone so you can use it with other software is considered fair user under copyright law, and is definitely legal. This is great news for the ten percent of iOS users who jail-break their devices, not that any of them (including myself) would have cared even the slightest bit that our improvements of Apple's software suddenly became illegal under copyright law.

Despite this success, if Apple had succeeded and got their way, I would be very angry. Copyright itself is just a right given to creators of works so they can safely assume that nobody else is going to appropriate their works. It is not a way to control what software a user puts on a hardware device they paid for, nor is it a way to "cleanse the iPhone ecosystem", so to say, by stifling any software that is not Apple-approved. In fact, considering copyright is supposed to facilitate the progress of science and the arts, it is actually counterproductive to forbid jail-breaking, since you are locking out software developers who want to provide to users, but do not want to stick within Apple's framework. It's like expelling a child from school because they colored outside of the lines. Oh no, imagine parents came to visit and saw such horrid artwork coming from one of our students!

The other problem with Apple's tower of control is their reasoning for forbidding jail-breaking. They want to make sure only the best software gets in, which really means they want the Apple experience to be perfect. However, technological perfection is not achievable, not even with Apple, as we saw with the many iPhone 4 issues. So trying to simulate such perfection at the cost of software creativity just seems idiotic. Well, all I know is that I like the Library of Congress a whole lot more than I did before. Thanks for protecting our rights as users and developers' rights as artists, and for making sure the community as a whole is freed from the evil clutches of Steve Jobs.