Jef"I am the pusher robot"Spaleta

I like my videos...shaken..not stirred.

2008-07-11T20:50:47Z

But what I really want is a video that has been..blended.

Okay so Fedora TV is up and running a work flow. We have a submission que. We have a delivery channel. So now we need is to start looking at what sort of things make sense as content. We have people looking at doing screencasts, and doing interviews... content of an educational or newsworthy nature. But what we don't have to round out our experimental programming is someone looking into generating artistic or entertainment content.

Who out there in Fedora Project land has some experience using blender as shipped in Fedora? Can any of you step up and render a short animation built in blender to be submitted to the Fedora TV feed. Extra points if you make the blender project data available so other people can take the initial video and expand on it via a community collaboration.

-jef

Patented Oddness...

2008-07-08T02:47:27Z

So looking back over the last few months of all the coverage concerning ooxml and how very bad it is... it seems to me that a lot of people have made it a point to question whether the ooxml specification has patented bits. Even in countries where software patents aren't so very important...yet.. the very issue of patents on bits of the ooxml specification made some sort of press.

Compared to the situation we have for patent encumbered audio/video standards..i find such interest in talking about the ooxml patent issue quite out of proportion. Why does the world, the free world, the world where innovation is yet to be shackled by the constraints of enforced software patents care so very much about the patentability of ooxml, but for audio/video format specifications, its barely on anyone's radar at all as something to be up in arms about?

Why is that? Why does the "wrongness" of patents on bits of ooxml get significantly more global press, but the known "wrongness" of patents on standard audio/video formats get far less scrutiny? Why do people care so much more on a global scale about the openness of their text and presentations, then they do about their audio and video? In the parts of the world where software patents are not the law of the land yet...why do patents in ooxml matter any more than patents in a/v software matter? In those places you are as free to ignore the issue and develop and use ooxml decode/encoding software as you are to develop and use an mp3 codebase. But for some reason the patent issue in ooxml hasn't been completely ignored. So why the uproar over ooxml when there's no wide spread passion to do the right thing when it comes to a/v and replace mp3 and mpeg with something unencumbered by patents?

Does it come down to the bottom line pressure of business to business economic needs instead of the liberty of personal freedoms? Do we need businesses and governments to start doing more audio/video interactions before a compelling reason to drag the industry forward into using an unencumbered a/v encoding standard? Do individual retail users matter at all in these sorts of standard setting conversations? Or are we simply consumers to be placated with shiny gadgets tied to the end of multi-year service and content delivery contracts? Is a/v still so much just a toy that if we lost all our video and audio encodings tomorrow the world wouldn't even skip a beat and we'd just go on buying the next re-mastered version of The Beatles White Album in whatever the next format is the media industry wants to sell us. Why does the world care so very much more about the issue of open accessibility of "documents" over the non-issue of accessibility of "media" ?

-jef

Dog yard and chicken coop for rent

2008-07-07T18:49:27Z

What a lovely long weekend. Perfect weather on the 4th for doing the move into the new house. And Sunday's weather was perfect for doing absolutely nothing and recovering from moving into the new house. The house comes fully equipped with a fenced in dog yard, for my very own dogsled team if I ever wanted one...and a chicken coop..if I ever wanted chickens. I also have what looks like a reasonably good beach volleyball court as a bonus feature of the new septic system install. Though it may end up as a landing area for a zipline attached to the house, if my friends are able to convince my wife to install the zipline they just happen to have already.

Still a couple of days away from having network access plugged back into the new house. I'm seriously looking at buying the Netflix settop box I've read about as an alternative to getting cable tv again. I guess I need to try the windows-only netflix video service first and see how I like it before I buy the settop box appliance.

Unfortunately I doubt I can use my laptop from inside the indoor sauna. I would think the moisture or the heat, or a combination of the two would be really bad for the laptop. But perhaps I can set the laptop outside the door and use the wiimote as a mouse device without damaging the wiimote...significantly. I can't think of a healthier way for me to multi-task the reading of fedora mailinglist mail, than to do it naked and sweaty in my very own indoor sauna.

We'll be having a house warming celebration in mid late August. I haven't talked to my wife yet about it, but I was thinking about inviting everyone in the cvsextras group to rsvp on attending. And considering my location, I could probably get away with doing it and only having to plan on like 2 additional burgers to buy for that one diehard Fedora contributor who wanted to drive 12 hours straight just to eat a couple of free burgers.

-jef

House poor

2008-06-27T19:03:43Z

We closed on our new house yesterday. I get to spend what I hope is a fantastically beautiful sunny Forth of July long holiday weekend moving all or our junk to the new house. I was hoping to make the down payment using a very large stack of 2 dollar bills, but apparently that many 2 dollar bills were not available. I think the cashier was lying to me, since they did not let me into the vault to verify their insufficient supply. Honestly at this point in time, it seems somewhat bizarre that I can't do some sort of electronic transaction instead of a cashier's check. I can move the very same amount of money from one bank to another electronically. How far away from that are we I wonder? And how far away are we from seeing Google map overlays for property line demarcations become the preferred way of drawing up land related documents? Want to know where the buried utilities are on your property, or if a road or utility easement cuts right through the center of your house.. fire up google maps with the property overlay and blam-o see the last know survey information. How far are we from that? I could use that. I have a hard time reading the simple sketches of property lines and offsets and crap on a piece of paper. Being able to overlay that information on an actual satphoto of my house would help me "see" where things are in relation to other things.

In other news I was re-elected to a half term appointment to the Fedora Project Board. I am officially not going to run again next time. Not because I don't think I should not be on the Board. This Project would only benefit if I was on the Board for forever. In fact Fedora should heavily invest in cutting edge cryogenic technology now, in the hopes of having a way to keep my brain alive and connected to the galactic-net, while freezing my body to be enshrined as a monument to which all sentient space-faring species pilgrimage to in reverence to ideals underpinning Fedora. But for the F11 release cycle at least, I want to free up some of my time and get my hands dirty again in some more detailed project work.

I'm telling you this now, in the hopes of encouraging the people who ran this time to run again next time. You won't have fend off my swiftboat attacks next time. And I would suggest those people, raise their profile a weebit during the F10 cycle by wading into non-technical discussions as they show up in the mailinglists. Don't prolong them unnecessarily, but use and manipulation those discussions specifically to voice your opinion. Being on the Board position is more about sticking your neck out and voicing an opinion on contentious issues and taking on naysayers and dissenters, then it is about actually doing any of the technical work yourself. You help create the space for the work, and defend the work that other people are doing in the project. Especially new work that may disrupt existing practices. The Board is as explicitly political as any collection of people inside Fedora can be. It is deliberately so. All the technical work that a person is able to do, which helps qualifies you as a leader inside the project and as a competent member of the Board, is not the focus of the work that you will actually be doing as part of the Board. You have to be willing to wade into discussions, and attempt to salvage something meaningfully constructive to take away for later even when you know the discussion itself is doomed and all you really want to do is to shake the stupid out of the people talking past each other.

Did the elections go well? Shrug. I got elected, though I did not get the highest number of votes as I was promised. Turn out was low as a percentage, but higher than last time in actual number of voters. I'm not going to get stuck in the mire of trying to understand what those two trends mean together. But I will certainly say that we can do better as part of the run up to electrions. Here's how.

1) Community nominations/ personal endorsements. There is absolutely room in the Board election process for community member to nominate and personally endorse candidates to supplement the existing self-nomination. But here's the deal. People have to CARE enough to actually nominate or endorse someone. If we implement this, expect me to come down hard on anyone who after the fact declares the candidate list as suboptimal. I will spare no mercy on anyone who fails to take advantage of a open nomination process to help put the best people up for election and yet feels it necessary to comment on the candidate quality.

2) We need to work in some sort of organized debate or q/a between candidates and the community. I think this is probably the most equitable thing we can do to give new people an equal footing with deeply established project leaders who have a high profile. This negates the strict advantages of a high profile. But again, community people have to CARE enough to generate a set of questions that matter. Since I'm not running next time, and I care, I will make it a point to make sure this happens. I am going to be soliciting questions from individuals that I know I want candidates to hear from. I will be keeping a list. If those individuals do not respond back to be with a questions I deem of significant value. I will publicly shame them for not caring enough to participate.

3) We need to do a better job of explaining the benefits of range voting and the power it holds to support the process of consensus building. The Board, at least while I have been there, by and large does not do straight up and down voting. We endeavor very very hard to find consensus. Why do we do that? Because at a fundamental level Fedora is organized bottom-up not top-down. The work that the Board does, is done to support the hard work that the community is already trying to do. It does not serve the long term goals of a bottom-up organized community to make policy decisions at the top which are narrowly supported except when we absolutely have to to avoid some sort of legal problem. Consensus building is a very important goal, and range voting as a way to elect multiple people to a group structure helps reinforce that. We just have to do a better job of explaining it.

4) We need a better way to advertise elections. Start page banner? Miro channel advert? Candidate interviews? lots to explore.
-jef

Scipy or bust

2008-06-25T00:44:04Z

Is there anyone out in Fedora space who is planning to attend the Scipy conference conference in August?
http://conference.scipy.org/

If you or multiple versions of you exist, I want to hear from you. I think it would be good to have a Fedora perspective at the conference with an aim of encouraging developers and user in the scipy community to get involved in shaping Fedora's future to better meet the needs of data analysis and visualization users. I know there's some kickass crap going on in the space, and we need to find a way to bridge the gap and get contributors on board as part of Fedora. I'm pretty sure its a good fit, and an easy case to make. We just need a representative there at the scipy conference making the case and acting as a contact person for questions concerning the Fedora process.

And sadly, I can't be there. I know, I know.. its west coast, and i'm the freaking scipy package maintainer at the moment. But such is life.

So if you are planning to attend Scipy, and feel comfortable acting as a Fedora Project liason.. I want to hear from you.

-jef

Vote for me at your own peril

2008-06-13T17:55:31Z

It's Fedora Board election time again and I'm running for re-election. Here's a snippet of an interview I conducted with myself while flying back from Australia.

Reporter Jef: Why do you want to be on the Board for another year?

Candidate Jef: I think I have a sane handle on how to interpret the project goals and ideals and how to pragmatically make policy and organizational decisions to best meet those goals without sacrificing the ideals.

Reporter Jef: So Jef what was it like being on the Board this past year?

Candidate Jef: That's a good question Jef. It's had its good points and bad points.

Reporter Jef: What were the bad points.

Candidate Jef: On a personal note, I botched trying to running a virtual FUDCon pretty badly. If given the opportunity again I'll delegate that out to someone with more ability to organize. In fact, regardless of how the elections shake out I'll be bringing that subject up of when and if we want to run another virtual FUDCon to fab after FUDCon Boston is over. As part of that discussion I'd like to see how close we are to being able to field multimedia virtual presentation with audio. New miro based video capabilities that people are putting together might be something we can leverage for another virtual FUDCon effort that is more compelling than just irc chats.

On a less personal note, we spend an enormous amount of time on the Board trying to come to terms with codeina. It's a difficult issue and the technical implementation we currently have available conflicts with policy decisions we have made, but by and large as policy makers we don't have the ability to impact how the technical implementation is developed to better meet our requirements. Consensus in this area is difficult.

Reporter Jef: What were the good points?

Candidate Jef: Sitting in on the Marketing organizational meeting at FUDCon Raleigh, and feeling the 'a-ha' moment on exactly what our external messaging for the project should be. I think that time was well spent, and its definitely borne fruit in the talking points showing up in the F10 release press.

More generally, I've been able to shamelessly leverage my Board credentials in an effort to try to engage scientific researchers concerning getting more directly involved with Fedora. I think long term, there's room inside Fedora to organize the development of reasonably comprehensive set of scientific analysis and computational toolkit. And just as importantly I think there is a natural synergy between Fedora and the long term platform infrastructure goals of science funding agencies like NASA and the NSF. It's not inconceivable that at some point in the future NSF and NASA might be able to fund some technical work under the umbrella of the Fedora project.

This sort of thing however is a multi-year process to lay the groundwork for a lasting relationship. Even if I were elected for three straight terms I doubt the long-term relationships would have solidified before the end of my time on the Board. But we have to get these sorts of conversations started. Fedora has the potential to grow well beyond what Red Hat can support by itself. We need to find new entities that can help support that additional growth. Government funding agencies like the NSF that have a compelling interest in an open computing infrastructure make sense to me to go after first. They don't have the complexity of a 'coop-etition' business relationship with Red Hat. Though at some point, having a second and third business entity step in and get directly involved in Fedora as a long term commitment wouldn't be a bad thing for the Project.

I also would like to think that I helped untangle some of the frustrations regarding how we deal with spin creation. The community spin process that was stood up as the result of discussion is still quite new and the process itself will probably need to be amended, but I'm hopeful that its a smoother way for the community to work on spin concepts. Time will tell.

Reporter Jef: Thanks for your time and good luck. You'll need it.

Jet Laggy

2008-06-02T21:07:09Z

Man this jet lag is killing me, I'm missing out on some quality evening drinking here at the SuperDARN conference in AU.

So yeah, SuperDARN, it looks like they will be changing the licensing on the analysis toolkit so that I can get it into Fedora and then take a serious look at releasing my python bindings for it. One step closer to a Fedora based SuperDARN analysis spin, which is one step closer to a virtual geophysical observatory spin. Give me a couple of years, the pieces are going to come together.

It's still not clear what it is going to take to move SuperDARN's radar operating code from qnx to linux. Something has to be done, but we are using rather specific hardware that the kernel doesn't support natively yet. I need to reach out the the existing kernel developer community and see if the SuperDARN scientific community can get some help to get the necessary hardware supported in the mainline kernel. I've had similar conversations with other scientific radar operators. There are a couple of specific hardware drivers that the research community needs help mainlining.

In other news, it looks like my discussions with the ESMP developers have paid off. I have confirmation that they will be looking to target Fedora as a development target for the codebase. That's also good news moving forward for scientific computing. If we can get ESMF into Fedora and other distributions and usable out of the box for new scientific model development, then we make it that much easier for academic researchers to extend what that framework can do.

-jef

Mr. Roboto

2008-05-23T18:36:10Z

I'm sure by now most of the people reading this have seen the articles on Fedora in the Robocup competition.

Some of you have heard me say this for a while now, but I'll say it again. Robotics is generally going to be a HUGE PR win for Fedora. Its simply super sexy...its science-fiction meets reality. Even for people who can't actually use the tools, its one of those areas that really captures the imagination of pretty much anyone who works with a computer. Paul and I have successfully tag-teamed/prodded Tim into stepping up to lead a Robotics SIG. Go Tim!

So what can a Robotics SIG do? There is a metric buttload of really interesting open source software out aimed at robotics research and education. And a Fedora SIG could be an entity that helps organize what's out there into an easier to use framework and move innovation in the area forward. We could even build our own open robotics competition under the Fedora brand. How cool would that be? Pretty damn cool.

With that in mind, I've tasked myself with trying to get the Lego Mindstorm NXT related open source stuff like python-nxt and the NXC compiler into Fedora so we can be an open development platform for educators working with the LEGO Mindstorm NXT platform. FYI, US First is moving to Mindstorms based platform for its Tech Challenge competition. If we can get a Mindstorms development environment out the door that works with the Tech Challenge kit we have an excellent talking point with middle and high school educators who are doing robotics in a classroom setting. These are the educators who will be out in front in terms of grokking technology, who have the best chance of 'getting' the ideals and goals that we are working to achieve inside the Fedora Project. These people who could learn to appreciate our message and adapt for their workplace to help us solidify a relationship with educators and start to bring them into our project as contributors.

Here's the problem... like usual..I could easily have misjudged my ability to get the work done. Please, as you talk to people about the robotics article... and they express any interest in robotics at all.. please bring up the new Robotics SIG... and do mention the fact that its not just highly specialized robotics we are aiming for as seen in the Robocup article. While people are working on that, there are also significant educational outreach opportunities all the way down into the high school and middle school level. If the people you talk to are Mindstorm NXT owners/fanatics and have done any of the advanced Mindstorms programming in NXC or even the proprietary robotc, they are potential contributors who are going to do a hell of a lot better job than me in the long run at maintaining this stuff.

-jef

Who wants to join my Blow Up the World SIG?

2008-05-14T21:56:45Z

Okay now that F9 is out the door, and before I've voted out of office, its time to take another stab at a discussion about building and strengthening the abilities of role based SIGs inside the Fedora projects moving forward.

I've come to picture the work the Fedora project needs to do as structured in terms of two types of communities (I have to credit Greg for some of the refinement on the image from the last round of discussion about this a few months back). One such type of community I would name "Subprojects". A subproject would be a group of peers who are doing roughly the same things, and could be considered a guild for a particular type of skilled labor. The other type of community I would name "Special Interest Groups" (SIGS), and each SIG would encompass all roles from users to developers that are needed to sustain the growth of software usage and development for a particular purpose.

Common tasks or experience define the membership of Subproject
Common interests but different tasks and experience define the membership of a role-based SIG.

SIG roles would map directly to subprojects. The idea being that people from different SIGS who are doing the same sort of tasks can establish best practices through discussion in the subprojects associated with that role. For example we'd have a packaging subproject, and each SIG should have members filling the package maintainer role who were also participating in the packaging subproject to learn and refine best practices. Same goes for documentors, triagers and so-on.

But its not a one-to-one mapping. There would be needed Subprojects which don't necessarily map to a common SIG role, but they would still exist to get specific work done or to establish a peer group of experts. I would hold up our infrastructure,translation and marketing teams as an example of this type of Subproject construct, a Resource Subproject.

They key idea is that for the role-based SIGs idea I am putting forward, we turn the SIG concept deliberately into a construct that encourages direct user participation, so that SIGs can more easily recruit for their own expanding workforce needs their own by connecting with users who are already interested in and using the software in the scope of the SIG. Experienced, veteren SIG members take on the role of mentoring and sponsoring new recruits.. and the SIG becomes a self-sustaining community with the goal of growing the capabilities of open software for a particular area of interest.

It is my very fervent belief that we need to build a recruitment and retention program inside of the Fedora Project that encourages enthusiastic users to become active contributors, and I think the role-based SIG construct has the best potential of doing that.. we just have to shake-up and tighten-up what we mean we we talk about a SIG. And that is exactly what my role-based approach to SIG building is meant to do.

Okay so I think that was close enough to a thousand words. Here's the updated cartoon diagram of what I mean when I'm talking about role-based SIGs:

-jef

Mapmaker Mapmaker make me a map.....

2008-05-13T22:46:54Z

Man I really wish someone would have told me Fedora 9 was coming out today.....

Because I'm an idiot the maps for the bittorrent activity didn't go online until after the release was out. So no movie of the release lighting up the torrent server this time around. But maps are up now!

You might be most interested in watching the bittorrent seeder activity here
and the mirrorlist activity here

Considering the effort made this time around to produce the multi-cdrom sets, I really hope people are making an effort to download and use them. And I really really hope that such an effort is not represented in the meager torrent seeder numbers currently displayed in the maps.

We need to find a way to get metrics from our mirrors and jidgo setup so we can get a comprehensive view of the relative view of how popular the different images are so we can make appropriate infrastructure allocations.

-jef

Questions for the class....

2008-05-09T19:48:26Z

For the sake of argument... let's say you happen to have access to one of the Pioneer DRM-7000 cdrom/dvd jukeboxes and you are interested in using it to archive data, scientific data with reliably parsable header information describing the contents of each file. For the sake of argument.. lets just say that those files look a lot like ogg vorbis files. They aren't but I think everyone can imagine a 720 dvd scsi auto-changer full of music.

How would you go about indexing the contents of all the files on all the cds/dvds in the jukebox so that you could efficiently locate which disks had the files you wanted and then could direct the auto-changer apperatus to load those disks so the files could be retrieved.

I understand stand how to do the mechanism of the actually auto-changer operation. mtx supports this beastie, from an operations point of view. But... operating it is only part of the problem. I need to be able to build an index that maps file header information to physical cd in the library. is there any framework out there that exists for this sort of thing? Or am I basically going to end up writing some python glue around a sqlite db that I can then query via a homebuilt interface? I'm looking to leverage as much pre-existing code as I can.

And yes... i realize that in the final analysis just setting up a 2 terabyte raid of sata disks is probably more cost effective... but where's the fun in that. This thing makes some kickass noises when its moving its robotic arm around changing media...and if I can change out some of the paneling with see-through plexiglass and pimp it out with internal lighting...it will be super hot.

-jef

I like webcomics....i like Fedora.....

2008-04-16T20:01:58Z

So here's a question....
Is there space under the Fedora project to introduce consumable content for Fedora users... made by Fedora users... using Fedora tools?

Off the top of my head here are a couple of things I'd like to see created for consumption for the Fedora user community, by the Fedora user community, using only the tools being put together by the Fedora development community:

A webcomic. It doesn't even have to be funny or even reasonably good. But I'd love to see a Fedora branded webcomic illustrated using only tools in the Fedora distribution (inkscape and gimp come to mind), with screencasts of the illustration process on occasion. As a Board member, I'd like to be able to tap an artist/group with a specific vision to produce a series of webcomics for a set period of time, and then at the end of that period, select a different proposal and do it again. Is anyone other their interested in being the official cartoonist of the Fedora community for a release?

A Fedora songfight. We have enough tools inside the distro right now to do a range of music production and spit out flac and vorbis files. Can we make a recurring Fedora songfight happen? And build a feed of the results that our client music applications can consume? We can't really police that all submissions are made using just Fedora tools, but we could probably find a way to seed the submission pool with individuals who make a firm commitment to dogfood Fedora distributed tools. Anyone out there dabble with music production and is up to the challenge of dogfooding Fedora?

I think both of these are great way to dogfood our own creative tools, and generate some dynamic content for our userbase to enjoy.

But as a project are we ready to try to put this together? Can we make F10 or even F11 the "open media" release and have vetted content channels in place that inspires people to create their own open media which they can submit for inclusion into the content channel, so on and so on? Obviously something like a Fedora songfight would require a web presence and hosting space and some organization. Do we have the resources and the manpower to attempt it inside the project umbrella?

-jef

I finally got my g1g1 lappy

2008-04-08T02:57:15Z

I'm just going to go ahead and assume that my xo took so long to get to me because it was specially delivered to me by sleddog from the east coast, as a sort of arctic homage to the Olympic torch ceremonies.

But I have it now.

I wish I had it a week earlier so I could have shown it off to all the teachers at the end of the year curling tournament. Oh well, I'm gonna have to have a party or something this summer and invite all of them over and then do a bait and switch and make then listen to be lecture about it.

-jef

So how many curling matches can I play in 24 hours?

2008-04-03T19:47:48Z

Its time to find out.

Starting this evening and running through Sunday morning... I will be competing in the Fairbanks 73th Annual Auto Service International Bonspiel.

If I do my job right, I'll lose the first 2 games, so that I'll be able to play more games and end up having a chance to win the C or D bracket championship. Yes, I have a better chance of winning.. by losing. It's a pretty deep concept.

But more importantly, the webcams for the club are back in operation, and there should be people playing pretty much any time of the day friday and saturday. No matter what timezone you are in, you might get lucky enough to catch me play. There's no telling when I'll be playing or if I be on the sheet with the camera.

I'll be filming dv footage as well when I'm not playing.. to make a promotional video for the club to send to the rockstar curling producers.

Between now and next year, I'm gonna try to play with a flumotion video server and see if I can stream a better feed than the webcam setup the club has now.

-jef

GSoC is interesting but.......

2008-04-02T19:06:00Z

what would it look like if we thought of independent open source developers as artists, with a full range of support opportunities from 1-month grants to multi-year residencies backed by a large assortment of overlapping groups at the local, state and national levels.

Who wants to help fund the operating costs of an open developers commune in the Alaskan wilderness? Where a group of open source developers live in relative isolation as a group for several months and concentrate on creating?

-jef

when 3rd place is more impressive than 1st

2008-03-30T05:55:57Z

So league curling season is over when the dust settled Friday night, we ended up with 3rd place for the Friday night league.

So I earned a 1st place t-shirt for the Monday night league and a 3rd place t-shirt for Friday night.

And I have to admit, getting the 3rd place shirt felt like a much bigger accomplishment. The Friday night league was far more competitive.

Tbough I think my Monday night team could probably kick my Friday night's team butt in a best of 7 series. Only problem is I'd need a clone of myself to put that theory to the test.

-jef

What Exactly is Free Content?

2008-03-28T19:43:30Z

I sort of agree with what Chris has said about Miro... and I sort of completely and utterly disagree at the same time.

We have a real problem in how we apply different definitions of "open" and "free" as it comes to content and code. It's a really painful problem...it keeps me up at night. I personally wouldn't call most of the content Chris describes as "open" nor would I call it "free"... I'd call it "consumable". I'm certainly not allowed to redistribute or reuse the bulk of that material to generate my own content. I doubt that I can legally take wired science video and make use of it beyond simple viewing.
The PBS website's default rules for hosted content certainly doesn't guarantee that sort of "freedom" to be as a user of that content: http://www.pbs.org/aboutsite/aboutsite_rules.html

It's the same sort of problem that's lingering over Creative Commons, concerning the confusion over what CC licensed really means. People keep running afoul of the restrictions on use for some CC material because those restrictions restrict freedoms that we've come to expect for "open" and "free" code. The differences between code and content will continue to be confusing, especially if our prominent proponents who straddle both areas of digital works don't make it a point to use terminology consistently.

That being said, it's great that Miro is a platform for getting access to "consumable" content. Its not so great that for the vast majority of that content... you have to be a "consumer" of encumbered software too. In a very fundamental way Miro has punted the hard problem in the space... encumbered video playback. The technology that Miro represents is built assuming that Miro users have legal access to the necessary technology to render the video that Miro organizes. For users of a commercial operating system, that assumption is easily met.. but it's not an assumption based on "openness" or "freeness" as we have come to apply them to software. So again, i have issues with using these words in association with the technology.

But Chris is right, Miro as an organization should be applauded for taking direct action and solving the problem they care about. Regardless of whether or not I think Chris should parse his words more careful concerning "open" and "free", Miro as a group is out there doing work and making things marginally better in a space they care about.

So the question is.. for those of us who care about truly "free" and "open" content, through its entire lifespan from creation to consumption, and then re-use.... what direct actions can we take to make things marginally better?

For those of us in the Fedora project specifically, what are we doing to make "open" content generation feasible? What are we doing to make consumption of "open" content feasible? And just as importantly who among us has the talent and the ability to create compelling and truely "open" video content that can be viewed in applications like Miro?

-jef

Champ-peon

2008-03-25T16:43:49Z

My Monday night curling team WON the Monday night fun league, with a 10 and 2 record. And more importantly I've got the t-shirt to prove it! It's probably the most expensive 'free' t-shirt I've ever paid for if you include the club membership dues, and the ice fees, and the curling shoes.

My Friday night team isn't doing so hot. Friday night is far more competitive, I don't think we have a chance to even place 3rd. But I do plan to wear my trophy shirt Friday night at the last game of the season, just to lord over my Friday night team a little bit.

Just one more event left in the curling season, the International Bonspiel which will starting about a week and 1/2. Its an around the clock tournament/party with like 50+ curling teams. You play games at 3 in the morning, with cases and cases of beer stacked up next to the ice to keep it cold. It's difficult to tell if its a beer festival or a curling event.

After that curling is done till the fall. I'm Still working on trying to get rockstar curling to hold tryouts up here, assuming they are still working towards a production.

-jef

Best comic strip ever

2008-03-20T18:02:30Z

Garfield minus Garfield is the best comic strip I have ever read.

But is its deeply disturbing truths only apparent because I know that Garfield use to be in the strip? If you never read Garfield growing up, and you saw Garfield minus Garfield as an adult, would its different perspective on Jon's mental state be as profoundly dark and amusing? Or would the lack of context just make the Garfield-less version meaningless and sad?

I'll end up trying to answer these questions and more when I finally have kids. Hopefully I have twins so I can run an experiment with a control group.

-jef"I wonder it Ziggy minus Ziggy would start to be amusing at all."spaleta

Back from the dead

2008-03-19T03:21:41Z

So I've been in bed with some sort of illness from friday evening. Fired up the intertubes for the first time time today. I'll probably take me the rest of the week to catch up on the 'fun' that I missed.

-jef

Want an LWN subscription... then hurry up and send me a request

2008-02-29T05:21:10Z

Okay I've got about 55 requests in so far from Fedora contributors for the LWN request lottery.
I want 20 more!!!!!!!

So if you are a Fedora contributor and been thinking about it and haven't put in a request yet... get off your ass and send in the information for an LWN subscription request. I'm taking requests for another 30 hours or so.

Even if you already have an LWN subscription, but you know someone else who could use an LWN account... send in a request with your FAS information and any LWN accountname you want. What matters is that the requests come from active Fedora contributors. If you already have an LWN subscription and want to re-gift..thats totally fine, just make sure the other person knows they are profiting from the generosity of the Fedora Project. The nagging guilt might bring them to become a Fedora contributor.

-jef

I'm cashing in all my street creds....for curling shoes

2008-02-24T22:13:33Z

If you are reading this, and you think that you owe me a favor... here's your chance to cash it in.

The TV show "Rockstar Curling" looks like its actually going to be happening. It looks like they are actually going to be holding
tryouts for the show. http://www.rockstarcurling.com

I'm asking everyone reading this to do me a huge favor and make an effort to lobby the show's producers to hold a tryout up here at the curling club that I am a member. You don't have to be a US citizen to help me out, a global campaign would suit me just fine.

I've registered, and I'm encouraging all the members of up here to register for tryouts. Now of course, I'm not gonna make the cut. Getting me on the show isn't what I'm asking you to help me with. What I want, if I can get it, is to encourage...to persuade.... the show's producers to hold a tryout here in Alaska, and Fairbanks specifically.

Can you help me out? I'd love it if everyone reading this would find a way to tell the show's producers how much you'd really LOVE to see a tryout up here in Fairbanks. They have a blog, you can leave comments in it... polite comments. And please don't spam. I'd rather everyone who is gonna do me this favor, just leave one comment. They can be long, very passionate and well worded comments, but don't do multiple ones in a misdirected effort to help me.

And to all you Fedoran's out there reading this. If you do your part, and you can help make a tryout happen in Fairbanks. I will wear Fedora branded swag to the tryout (if I get a chance to tryout) and in the hopes of getting the Fedora name and logo on TV..even if in the "worst curlers ever" episode during sweeps.

-jef

LWN, Fedora and you.

2008-02-23T23:55:42Z

This will be hitting the fedora announce list soon.

Feel free to repost a link to this in locations where Fedora contributors might see this.
-------

To support the 10th anniversary of LWN.net, the Fedora Project has
purchased 65 subscriptions to be given to Fedora contributors.

The Fedora Board has decided that the fairest way to distribute this
windfall of subscriptions is by holding an open lottery for all Fedora
contributors who have an active account in the Fedora Account System
(as of Feb 1st, 2008). I will be taking requests from all such
interested Fedora contributors for the next week. If you are
interested in making a request, here is what you need to do:

Send an email to: jspaleta AT fedoraproject DOT org

Subject: LWN Subscription request

Please include the following:
* Your Fedora Account System username
* Your full name as it appears in the Fedora Account System
* Your LWN account name (you'll need to create an account with LWN
before sending in the request for a subscription)

Please have all requests in by March 1st, 2008.

-jef"The Man...agement"spaleta

The end of the world is nigh

2008-02-16T09:22:56Z

My team decided collectively that they were tired of my incessant criticism of the way they were skipping when it was their chance to skip. Sooooo they made me skip this evening. I much prefer sweeping. Skipping isn't nearly as much fun, you just stand around being cold and yelling at people who are just going to ignore you anyways. And having to make the last shots every end is a real downer. So I skipped, and we won....I think my team's plan backfired. Now I can lord my perfect skipping record over them.

Lot's more curling coming up this weekend. I've got a 4 game round robin 'fun' tournament over the weekend, and then my Monday night league.

-jef

This is what it sounds like when gums bleed

2008-02-07T06:13:51Z

So I went to see the periodontist today to essential give my gums a facelift.

Partly because my wisdom teeth came in so..interestingly.. and made it hard to clean.
And partly because going to dentist for regularly scheduled cleanings was consistently lower on my priority list than curling up in a fetal position and having a panic attack over how my research was going....

I had developed some small pockets of infection below the gum line, eating away bone, and too deep to keep clean with regular care. The dentist can do some aggressive cleaning of the pockets, but you can't keep them cleaned out. In order to stop the progression of the bone loss, the solution is to reset the gum line. The gum is cut and pulled back exposing the affected area so that it can be reached for cleaning.

The bone loss i've already sustained is permanent, but the roots of the tooth affects are literally about 3.2 miles long, My gum was reset about 5 millimeters. I'm in no danger of having my teeth fall out, but is one of those things where once you find out about it, you might as well take care of it while its relatively easy to take care off.

All this is a preamble to the essentially truth that I learned today: Band-aids affixed over your molars taste HORRIBLE. I can't identify it, but it isn't pleasant. You'd think they'd make these things minty.

-jef