The BBS Documentary is a great watch. It's long, interesting and packed full of stories that make you go all fuzzy inside. At some points it's even a bit teary.

What's more important about the BBS Documentary is that it's been released under a Creative Commons licence. The creator, Jason Scott has done a wonderful thing by releasing his work this way, and I hope it becomes an example for the future. It's also a very smart business move that will attract customers.

I released the entire production under what's called a "Creative Commons" license. Instead of becoming a part of the massive group of content providers that are threatening children and families with insane fines and jail time for watching movies, I decided I would instead encourage people to share or use portions of the story of the BBS. I think the history of the BBS is important for people who are using the Internet to know about. As someone who grew up using BBSes, I knew I wanted as many people to see it. Getting money out of every single person who watched it ever for all of time was not a goal.

The full details and Jason's explanation are here.

In light of another rediculous ruing from the US Stupreme Court in the recent MGM vs. Grokster case, one that reeks of FUD, misunderstandings by the judges and most probably another sign of corruption in the ranks of power, it's good to know there are more realistic people turning out good products.

The title of this post comes from the title of this article from ZDNet Australia. It's not much of a read really, but has a few interesting/funny quotes I'd like to share and reply to.

The end of free Internet content will come when Web browsers start blocking online advertisements by default, a DoubleClick executive has warned.

I take the point of this statement, but would suggest there'd still be a hell of a lot of free content available if advertising were not around. Most of the 'content' that would disappear would be advertainment anyway. But I'd like to call the bluff and see how many content providers would suddenly start asking for subscription fees.

Bennie Smith, the online advertising network's privacy chief, told ZDNet Australia the popularity of tools like Adblock -- an extension to the Mozilla Firefox browser -- which makes blocking online ads simple was tied to "a negative vibe against advertising in general".

Crikey!!! I'd say we were well due for a bit of 'negitive vibes' against the advertising industry. They been having the run of the mill for way too long. And to what result? Millions of people around the world spend money they don't really have on items they don't really need or want. I know the blame for this shouldn't all fall on the advertising industry alone, but they should take a very large portion of the blame. Most advertisers will admit openly to the methods they use to get consumers on-side of the products they push.

Part of the Internet's value proposition lies in the provision of large amounts of free content. "But that content is not without cost. And that cost is my eyeballs seeing an ad on a page. Or within an e-mail, or next to my search results, or however it's going to come," Smith explained.

Bennie has obviously lost the plot and, like most of the management employees from old school industries, does not see the Internet as a chance to change the world for the better, but only as something to mold into a money making venture. I agree that free content is not without cost, but that cost doesn't necessarily have to relate to a new Porche in Bennie garage.

If any browser manufacturer considered implementing an ad-blocking feature as a default option, Smith said they should consider their own position as a marketer [of their own products] and a publisher of content.

I think Firefox is doing ok for a product that does include an ad-blocking feature as a default. The Mozilla Foundation doesn't seem to have a problem marketing their porducts based primarily on the fact that they are well made. There's no need to slip in a shot of a blonde deep-throating an ice cream for that product Bennie.

There is a demand for ad-blocking software that is simply not going to go away. I suggest Bennie result back to walking around city blocks with a cardboard sign around his neck.

I watched Black Sky: The Race for Space last night.

The remarkable story of Burt Rutan and SpaceShipOne. Only three of the most powerful governments in the world have achieved what they set out to do from a garage in the Mojave desert: to put a man in space.

Even if you're not into space technology, this is a really enjoyable documentary. Inspiring to say the least. Bit of a tear jerker at times as well. At it's heart, it's a great story about a small group of people doing something really big - and important.

BitTorrent is currently the most effective way to distribute digital media and has been noted as consuming 35% of all Intenet traffic.

Recently researches at Microsoft released information on a p2p protocol they have been working on called Avalanche. Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent has written some thoughts about what he thinks of Avalanche.

Also of interesting is John C. Dvorak's article on the relation between the release of Avalanche and the recently misguided articles of how BitTorrent is now plagued with Spyware.

Meanwhile, we are hearing about Avalanche as though it is in beta. Articles begin to emerge about the product just as some dubious articles appear all over the Net about how BitTorrent has something to do with spyware. Interesting coincidences indeed.

The only way you could possibly infect your 'puter with spyware via BitTorrent is if you downloaded an unknown executable file and ran it. It's common sense not to do something like this and it should be pointed out that this method of infection is probably most popular with email attachments, especially with Microsoft's scriptable email applications, where uncommon file extensions [.vbs, etc] can be scripts that take advantage of the weak Windows security model.

There is no spyware in BitTorrent. There is no way BitTorrent is being tricked into delivering spyware. We hear that BitTorrent files are "infected." What specific to BitTorrent is infected? Is it the BitTorrent initiation files? Or is it the payload? If it's the payload (the media file, for example) then what's it got to to do with BitTorrent per se? Nothing, that's what.

Don't believe the hype!

The people from the silverorange web design/development company have posted a description of the open source software they use in their office. This is a good idea because as they state...

...since open source software doesn’t have a PR firm to tell the world that a small business like ours can run linux on a majority of desktop machines...

Now that I think of it, I'm sure most small businesses would prefer a simple honest description of the uses of open source software in the workplace rather than read some of the dribble that comes from PR firms. You can't believe most of what PR or advertising companies regurgitate anyway.

It's a good read and also a bit of an eye opener. For example;

Wine and Crossover Office let us run some key Windows applications, including Photoshop and Internet Explorer (for browser testing) on Linux. This is not easy or smooth enough to rely on for full-time use, but it does a fine job for occasional or testing use.

I orginally found this via an Acts of Volition post. Acts of Volition is a blog by Steven Garrity, creative director at silverorange.

I first saw this on Jeremy's blog, but it's here, here and everywhere.

...this is the sort of good home that i was looking for — yahoo! obviously has the resources to run and improve blo.gs in pace with the incredible growth of blogs (and syndication in general), and in talking with them it was also clear that we had some of the same vision for the future of the service and the ping/notification infrastructure...

It's good to finally see Solaris being made OpenSource.

The OpenSolaris Project is an open source operating system, a community development effort and a place for collaboration and conversation about OpenSolaris technology. It is aimed at developers and users who want to develop and improve operating systems. The OpenSolaris technology represents cutting edge operating system design, but the innovation is just getting started!

This will definitely raise Solaris' profile. I can imagine quite a few Solaris users will get behind this in a good way. Well done Sun.

...over the past few months something has changed. No, the people are as friendly and helpful as ever. But something unquestionably has changed. So what smells so fishy in the Linux community today?

An interesting article from Really Linux

...some good documentaries, so I'd thought I'd share tell you about a few of them.

The Corporation - I'm a sucker for anything with Noam Chomsky or Naomi Klein in it, and this film has both of them, as well a wide range of other interviews of people ranging from Indian Seed Activists to the CEOs of corps lie Shell, Goodyear and Interface. There's a lot of honest, realitisic information in this film.

From a user commenting on IMDB;

...The sum total is a compelling story of the evil that can be and is done by and in the name of corporations. I say this as one who has worked in a corporate environment my entire career, and who for a very long time has had difficulty getting past the 'but these are almost all nice people -- I don't know any ogres out to intentionally rape & pillage' perspective.

What I'm gradually wakening to is the realization that yes, the corporate structure is very efficient at doing what it's designed to do -- which unfortunately does not include taking social responsibility or the greater good into account. Instead it's ruthlessly focused on the bottom line, come hell (literally) or high water -- or polluted water...

The Take is another documentary that Naomi Klein was involved with. It's a very inspiring story.

In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave...

The collapse of Argentina's peso in 2001 threw millions out of work and plunged what had been one of Latin America's most prosperous countries in the 1990s into the kind of economic depression not seen in the United States since the 1930s. Four years later thousands of ruined businesses remain closed. In a handful of cases though, workers occupied and reopened shut factories, health clinics, and schools as employee-owned and operated- cooperatives.

The Blue Planet. If you're a fan of the natural loving David Attenborough, and like to understand more about the amazing life dwelling in our oceans, seas and rivers, this won't let you down. A must for anyone with the slightest interest in biology, it's also a visual journey for all ages and intellects.

The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream. While a hauntingly realistic view of what's in store for the 'burbs' around America and the rest of the western world, the idea of 'Peak Oil Theory' is relevant to everyone, whether you live on a farm, in the inner city or on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. This film is not only a good introduction to Peak Oil Thoery, but goes into detail about what effects the reduction of oil production may have Joe & Jane Smith, with their 2.5 children, 2 cars, TV in every room and weekly pilgrimages to the church mall.

I'm slowly getting over the shock that most other Apple customers have experienced in the last 48 hours. I have a recently purchased PowerBook G4 which runs beautifully and should keep me going through the transition-storm of the next few years. I was seriously thinking about purchasing PowerMac G5 for a desktop system, but needless to say, those plans have been put on hold.

There's a good thread over at MaxFtiIt that's worth a read for concerned Apple customers.

It's often said..."a picture is worth a thousand words" - Napoleon Bonaparte...and if that's the case, here are 6000 words for the Apple employees in charge of making the switch transition easy for customers.

Firstly, it's good to know someone else is as shocked as I am.

Also, Dave Winer discovers from Michael Gartenberg that;

1. Given history, this isn't a total shock. The former CEO of NeXT moved that platform from Motorola to Intel and there's a lot of NeXT in OS X. And that forner CEO is still Steve Jobs.

2. This isn't a clone play. No running OS X on your Dell. No running Windows on your Macintosh out of the box. I would expect over time hacks to abound to try and enable both.

3. It isn't a major shift as so much of the code has already been abstracted since the Power PC shift in 1994. Most, if not all OS X apps will just work out of the box.

But still, I have to agree with C.K. Sample, III, who says...

...I cannot imagine Apple managing to sell many machines running a PowerPC chip after they just ditched the platform so openly and quickly. So if you've been waiting for the WWDC before buying that new Mac, you might have to wait quite a bit longer.

After all the speculation & rumors, Steve Jobs finally did the deed and announce Apple's switch to Intel processors. Apple must have made a great deal with Intel, and I hope it's works out for them, because it's going to cause a lot of trouble for developers & users.

Well, apparently developers are ok because Apple has a software version of the Rosetta Stone that will help with the transfer. Having this sort of software readily available is an indication that they've been thinking about and planning this for a long time.

I'll bet the new Apple laptops that come with Intel processors are going to run really hot. Although on the bright side they should have a very noticable speed increase [if you can compare it with other unix-based OSes running on Intel-based notebooks].

If Apple's plans are to allow OSX to be run on any Intel processor-based system, I think their OS market share is going to skyrocket, as the expensive hardware has always been a deterrent to a lot of Windows users wanting to play both sides.

The only thing I can see hampering an increase in market share would be a secure and user-friendly Longhorn, but unless Microsoft is secretly basing Longhorn on Unix to resolve their security problems [which is quite possible considering the relationship they've recently has with SCO, and the incompatibilities Longhorn is to have with exisiting Windows OSes], personally I can't see this happening.

As an example of how this change is going to effect Apple is a bad not-so-good way, here's my current drama brought on by the switch. I have two clients that are presently considering switching to Apple, so much so that we are at the point of choosing systems to meet their requirements. These are avaerage users with moderate requirements. The premise of the switch is that OSX:

• is more secure straight out of the box and doesn't require a multitude of extra software [and extra $] to keep the average user safe.
• is way more user-friendly than any of the alternatives.
• performs much better [let's admit it, Windows XP has always performed like a dog, with XPSP2 all the more so - and Linux is still a little too hard for this type of client].
• has much better international language input functionality [ie: both these clients require easy & bug free input of English & Japanese].
• has a free software library containing thousands of products [I'm talking Unix-based open source apps here, although there are an increasing amount of OSX specific open sources apps appearing everyday].

Also note that, being average users, and realising that Apple hardware costs a good deal more that any alternative, these client are expecting their new Apple systems to last at least 2-3 years, which I think is both understandable and doable [remember, they are not power-users with an ongoing need for the latest and greatest]

Now, being the responsible consultant that I am, I'm probably going to have to tell these clients that the next 2-3 years are looking rather uncertain for someone buying a PowerPC-based Apple in mid-2005. This is not a good look - for me or Apple. Of course, before I make this decision, I'll do a lot more research than reading a few blogs [and will disregard any information I read from 'online newspapers'] and will rely heavily on the information coming from Apple.

This rasies a problem in itself. Apple aren't going to have anything bad to say about the switch. It'll be like the generals telling the allied troops how great it's going to be once they've invaded Normandy - they leave out the part about running up the beaches over hundreds of dead bodies while being shot at with machine guns and bombed by mortas. I guess the best advice Apple will have is the same as the generals - dig in and try not to get killed.