Blogging to Nowhere

Firstly, I apologise if this article isn’t particularly well thought out or well worded. I just wanted to get this out there. Secondly, in the interests of keeping my blog clean, I’ve slightly censored some of the language I would have used. I’m sure you can use your imagination to fill in the blanks!

Is it just me or has there been an increasing amount of Apple fanboyism around recently? This is really beginning to annoy me. Principally, because I just don’t care. Apple are completely irredeemable in my eyes, they are worse than Microsoft, but no-one seems to see this, whatever they do!

This is really hacking me off in the Open Source media, particularly on podcasts (I’m looking at you Shot of Jaq!). Frankly, I don’t give a <censored> what Apple are doing, or what they might do in the future. I don’t listen to Open Source podcasts for this.

Then there’s Ubuntu, which seems to be moving closer and closer to the Mac in terms of looks (this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but why can’t we be more inventive?). The Ubuntu community seems to be going
this way too. In a recent episode of the Ubuntu UK Podcast the words ‘the Mac just works’ were uttered. Hello! So does Ubuntu! (of course I can only speak from my experience, but I rarely if ever have problems).

As a solution to this growing epidemic, I propose a simple test which you should use if you are tempted to praise Apple in public, particularly in the Open Source media.

Simply answer the following five questions:

1. Name five pieces of Open Source software that Apple have contributed to the community.

2. Would you buy an iPhone over a Nexus One? Seriously?

3. Is the iPad even an original idea? (clue: No.)

4. If the Mac is so great, why is it so damned hard to use? Why can’t it be configured to work they way I want?

5. Do you like DRM? Apparently, neither does Steve. Slightly hypocritical, don’t you think?

If you can’t answer these simple questions in Apple’s favour, KEEP STUM!

Well it’s been a couple of days since I posted my rant about my bad experience with turnitin.com on Ubuntu and (shock horror!) I’ve had a response (thus defying the title of this blog).

The responder was Stephen Sharon via Twitter, he’s written a paper around some of the legal concerns over turnitin and he sent me the link. It’s good reading and confirms some of the things I had heard surrounding the site. I’d encourage everyone reading this to click through and read Stephen’s paper (it’s 38 pages, but double spaced and with much of each age containing references).

I’m not qualified to give legal comment on tunitin (I’m and Engineer not a Lawyer), but I will give my opinion. Before I do I’d like to give the following disclaimer (in true Software Freedom Law Show style):

WARNING: The following DOES NOT (in any way, shape or form) constitute legal advice, it is only my own (perhaps misguided) opinion. I would urge anyone who has any concerns over how their data may have been used by Turnitin to contact someone who actually knows what they a talking about, in this case A LAWYER!

Basically, I think Turnitin is on pretty shaky legal ground both in terms of Copyright and Privacy (certainly under US law). Here I New Zealand we have different privacy laws, but I’m sure they probably say much the same thing. The copyright issues are also concerning, I don’t want to turn over my rights to Turnitin just so I can submit my paper. What if my assignment gave technical details of an invention which I may in future have some financial interest in. Turnitin would have the right to use that information as they see fit.

Realistically I think it’s only a matter of time before Turnitin is taken to court again to face a hard examination of their user agreement, etc. This whole thing brings be back onto the subject of Free Software. I think it really is important for these tools which have such important uses to be Free (as in speech), it would be great to see a Free Network Service replace Turnitin as the dominant player in this market. I would much rather trust that to be transparent and honest than a company driven by profit and market share.

Anyway that’s just my $0.02. Before I finish I’ll encourage you all again to read Stephen’s paper.

Bye!

Sorry about this but I really have to say something about this. We had to submit an assignment yesterday via turnitin.com and it broke on me because I wasn’t using a ‘supported operating system’, I was using Ubuntu.

When I logged in I got a message warning me that it might not work, but I honestly don’t see the reason why. Shouldn’t it just be browser specific, not OS specific? I then proceeded to upload my PDF and it seemed to think it actually wasn’t a PDF! Switching to a Windows XP machine and uploading the same PDF worked fine which is the really random thing.

I don’t even see why our University has to use a third party service for this anyway, I’m sure they have the resources to do this in house. Then there is the whole copyright thing, which I’m not altogether happy with either.

Anyway, at least it seems Ubuntu isn’t alone in this, according to a friend Windows 7 also triggers the same error message (albeit without the PDF fail).

Again, sorry for the rant.

There was a power outage today across most of eastern Auckland and stretching into the central city. Having realised that we were all basically useless without our computers we went home early. The NZ Herald is now reporting that the power is mostly back on.

Apparently this whole thing was caused by the failure of one transformer at one sub-station. I amazes me that this should affect such a large area! Why is there no redundancy, even if (as in this case) one of the other transformers is down for maintenance? There should be backups to cope and even if an area goes off it shouldn’t affect half the city.

New Zealand still has a long way to go in getting to grips with this whole ‘electricity’ thing.

Not that I’m complaining about an afternoon off!