From mako at atdot.cc Sun May 13 21:20:07 2007 From: mako at atdot.cc (copyrighteous) Date: Sun May 13 21:20:09 2007 Subject: [copyrighteous] Section Headings Message-ID: <20070513212007.D85274189D@volo.yukidoke.org> I think that this sign in the [Housing Works Used Book Cafe][1] is an example of how fixing "/ Crime" to any subject heading in a bookstore can have humorous results (apologies for the blurry phone picture). [![Pop Culture / Crime section heading in Housing Work][2]][3] [1]: http://www.housingworks.org/usedbookcafe/ [2]: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/images/pop_culture_crime-small.jpg [3]: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/images/pop_culture_crime.jpg URL: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20070513-00 From mako at atdot.cc Mon May 14 23:20:12 2007 From: mako at atdot.cc (copyrighteous) Date: Mon May 14 23:20:16 2007 Subject: [copyrighteous] Selectricity Message-ID: <20070514232013.24C56416AD@volo.yukidoke.org> More than a year ago, I [published][1] an election methods library called [RubyVote][2]. Interest in the library surpassed any of my expectations: I know of at least one startup using the library heavily in their core business and a number of fun sites, like [Red Blue Smackdown][3], that are using it as well. The point of course, was to make complex but superior election methods accessible in all sorts of places where people were making decisions suboptimally. It its own small way, it seems to have succeeded enormously. Over the last year, I've been asked by a variety of people if they could use RubyVote for their own organizational decision making -- tasks like electing leadership of a student group or members of a non-profit board of directors. Since RubyVote was just a library without a UI of its own, I had to tell them "no." I caved in eventually and got to work on a quick and dirty web-based front end to the library. That project grew into [Selectricity][4] which is a primarily web-based interface to a variety of different election methods and voting technologies. You can currently try out [quickvotes][5] which can be created in half a minute and voted on in a quarter but which bring all of the power of preferential voting technologies to bear on very simple decisions. Prompted by [Aaron Swartz][6], I also built a [mobile phone version][7] that's lets you send a short email or SMS to create or vote in a election. For those that follow research in voting technologies, there's not a lot of new stuff here. What's new is that this project, unlike the vast majority of voting technologies, is interested in the state of the art for everyone _but_ governments. Clearly government decisions are important but they're one set of decisions, usually only once a year. Selectricity is voting machinery for everything and everyone else. It was [announced][8] in a [variety][9] of news outlets today that Selectricity was selected for grant from [mtvU][10] and [Cisco][11] as part of their [Digital Incubator][12] project. As part of that, I'm going to be working with some other voting technology experts to bring tools for auditable elections, cryptographically secured anonymity, and voter verifiability to the platform (I have only rudimentary functionality today). There are a couple people who will be joining me on the project this summer and we will building out what I hope will be an extremely attractive platform for better every-day decision-making. More than the grant though, I'm excited about the visibility that use by MTV will bring to the project. Most of all though, I'm just excited about more free software and more (and more accessible) democratic decision making. My adviser Chris Csikszentmih?lyi [put it well][13]: > One of the big arguments against preferential voting, or new voting technologies, is the fear that they would disenfranchise the average person who doesn't yet understand how they work. Certainly, making all voting technologies open source is critical, but the issue of familiarity is worth considering. We?re hoping that MTV ? and eventually American Idol ? will move their voting over to Selectricity, allowing it to work as both a technical tool but also pedagogically, training future voters. Why not integrate democratic processes into all your software and communications tools? Why not use the best democratic processes available, so long as they're available to everyone? [1]: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20060127-00 [2]: http://rubyvote.rubyforge.org/ [3]: http://www.redbluesmackdown.com/ [4]: http://selectricity.media.mit.edu [5]: http://selectricity.media.mit.edu/quickvote/create [6]: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ [7]: http://selectricity.media.mit.edu/selectricity-anywhere.html [8]: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/college/mtv-and-cisco-really-want- to-be-hip-with-the-kids-260215.php [9]: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&ie=UTF-8&ncl=1116338478 [10]: http://www.mtvu.com/ [11]: http://www.cisco.com/ [12]: http://www.digitalincubator.net/ [13]: http://web.media.mit.edu/~csik/edgy/ URL: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20070514-00 From mako at atdot.cc Tue May 15 19:20:10 2007 From: mako at atdot.cc (copyrighteous) Date: Tue May 15 19:20:13 2007 Subject: [copyrighteous] Ubuntu Community Council Message-ID: <20070515192011.32D59416F4@volo.yukidoke.org> Very quietly, the Ubuntu community reached a major milestone today when we held a [Community Council][1] [meeting][2], like it does fortnightly. The only thing different was that the council included five new members -- Mike Basinger, Corey Burger, Matthew East, Jerome S. Gotangco and Daniel Holbach. These members are, with the exception of Holbach, not employed by Canonical and were each confirmed by a vote of the full Ubuntu [membership][3]. Before the recent elections, I was the only member who was not a Canonical employee -- and I used to be one. >From a technical perspective, the founding Ubuntu team was able to benefit from everything that Debian had built -- a running start if there ever was one. From a community perspective though, we had to start from scratch and had to deal with the very difficult situation that [paid labor][4] and closely entangled corporate interests. Working with the rest of the team, I drafted a set of community norms (the [Code of Conduct][5]) and governance structures designed to keep both the community and Canonical under control. They seemed like good ideas but, because we didn't have a community yet, only reflected the sensibilities of Mark Shuttleworth, myself, and the rest of the early Ubuntu team. The highest Ubuntu governance board, the Community Council was initially filled with people that were in the room in Oxford when we came up with the idea: myself, Mark, James Troup, and Colin Watson. We decided that the council members should, and would, be approved by a vote of the membership. With no members though, we faced a bit of a bootstrapping problem. Three years later, Ubuntu has a vibrant community with hundreds of enfranchised members who have an up-or-down say on the members of the council itself. When we looked for new potential council members to propose to the community, we tried to pick the most active, most level- headed, and most representative group we could find. It was pleasing to see that only one member of the new CC board works for Canonical; Canonical employees are now outnumbered. It has been interesting to see announcements by [Fedora][6], [FreeSpire][7], [OpenSuSE][8] over the last few years proposing systems of more inclusive community governance structures that, perhaps not entirely coincidentally, look a bit like what Ubuntu has built in its attempts to empower users in that sometimes awkward community/company environment. Whatever the reasons, I think it means there's more pressure on us at Ubuntu to keep raising the bar. I see today as a great example of how we've done just that. [1]: http://www.ubuntu.com/community/processes/council [2]: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CommunityCouncilAgenda [3]: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntumembers [4]: http://mako.cc/writing/funding_volunteers/funding_volunteers.html [5]: http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct [6]: http://lwn.net/Articles/178518/ [7]: http://www.linspire.com/lindows_news_pressreleases_archives.php ?id=197&all=1 [8]: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi- bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-09-2005/0004085250&EDATE= URL: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20070515-00 From mako at atdot.cc Wed May 16 14:50:25 2007 From: mako at atdot.cc (copyrighteous) Date: Wed May 16 14:50:31 2007 Subject: [copyrighteous] Principles Objections Message-ID: <20070516145026.B110641881@volo.yukidoke.org> Once, I was telling an executive in a large technology company that mostly builds non-free technologies why I did not like most of their products and business decisions and about some of the things that I was doing to help their consumers work around them and avoid paying them in the future. Excited, the manager suggested that I consider a job with them at least in part as an advocate for these ideas within their company. I mentioned that my criticism was primarily principled and fundamental to the way his company did business. He responded, "yes, but if you take a job with us, you get to have your principles _and_ a BMW." I don't think he understood my principles. Perhaps, he didn't understand principles at all. URL: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20070516-00 From mako at atdot.cc Thu May 17 18:50:11 2007 From: mako at atdot.cc (copyrighteous) Date: Thu May 17 18:50:12 2007 Subject: [copyrighteous] A Disturbing Trend Message-ID: <20070517185011.94A9441915@volo.yukidoke.org> When I saw the first mutilated [Tickle-Me-Elmo][1], I thought it was slightly funny and worth a quick picture with the camera -- but I didn't give it much thought. [![/copyrighteous/images/elmo_truck-small.jpg][2]][3] Now that it's becoming a trend, I'm beginning to get a little worried. [![/copyrighteous/images/elmo_desk-small.jpg][4]][5] [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tickle_Me_Elmo [2]: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/images/elmo_truck-small.jpg [3]: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/images/elmo_truck.jpg [4]: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/images/elmo_desk-small.jpg [5]: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/images/elmo_desk.jpg URL: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20070517-00 From mako at atdot.cc Sun May 20 00:50:05 2007 From: mako at atdot.cc (copyrighteous) Date: Sun May 20 00:50:09 2007 Subject: [copyrighteous] Free Culture Talk Recording Message-ID: <20070520005005.EF66C417E5@volo.yukidoke.org> As I mentioned [previously][1], I was graciously given the opportunity to speak the crowd at the [Free Software Foundation's][2] [Members Meeting][3] in March about some of my work and activism around Free Culture. In front of what was probably the friendliest audience possible, I compared the free software and free culture movements and explained why I think that free culture movement may be off track -- and, of course, what we as a community might be able to do about it. If you listen to it, please try to forgive my faults as a speaker. The message I tried to convey is what I think is one the most important tactical issues facing free culture. If this talk dwells a little too long on free software and the lessons we might take from that world, please consider my audience. You can listen to the talk here: * Talk ([OGG Vorbis][4] or [MP3][5]) * Q&A ([OGG Vorbis][6] or [MP3][7]) [1]: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20070312-00 [2]: http://www.fsf.org/ [3]: http://www.fsf.org/associate/meetings/2007 [4]: http://epicenter.media.mit.edu/~mako/fsf_members_meeting_recordings /hill-free_culture-talk-fsf_members_meeting.ogg [5]: http://epicenter.media.mit.edu/~mako/fsf_members_meeting_recordings /hill-free_culture-talk-fsf_members_meeting.mp3 [6]: http://epicenter.media.mit.edu/~mako/fsf_members_meeting_recordings /hill-free_culture-qa-fsf_members_meeting.ogg [7]: http://epicenter.media.mit.edu/~mako/fsf_members_meeting_recordings /hill-free_culture-qa-fsf_members_meeting.mp3 URL: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20070518-00 From mako at atdot.cc Mon May 21 01:20:07 2007 From: mako at atdot.cc (copyrighteous) Date: Mon May 21 01:20:08 2007 Subject: [copyrighteous] National Free Culture Conference Message-ID: <20070521012007.2A99440CDB@volo.yukidoke.org> [Harvard Free Culture][1] is helping to organize this years' [National Free Culture Conference][2] -- the meeting for North American Free Culture student groups. The whole shindig is planned for May 26, 2007 at Harvard University here in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The [schedule][3] is solidifying and I will presenting and arguing for adoption or support of the [Free Cultural Works Definition][4] within the FC student movement and probably also be talking about community building and advocacy in some free software groups I've worked with. Housing is available and the event is open to the public. If you?d like to attend, speak, or help out with the conference, please email [freeculture@hcs.harvard.edu][5] or check out the [Facebook event][6]. If you're on the fence about attending, you can read this [glowing endorsement of the conference][7] by high protectionist James DeLong at IP Central. [1]: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/freeculture/ [2]: http://freeculture.org/blog/2007/04/23/natl-conf-may-26- cambridge-ma/ [3]: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~freeculture/blog/?page_id=69 [4]: http://freedomdefined.org [5]: mailto:freeculture@hcs.harvard.edu [6]: http://harvard.facebook.com/event.php?eid=2265844153 [7]: http://weblog.ipcentral.info/archives/2007/05/free_culture_2.html URL: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20070520-00 From mako at atdot.cc Mon May 21 18:50:07 2007 From: mako at atdot.cc (copyrighteous) Date: Mon May 21 18:50:10 2007 Subject: [copyrighteous] One Stop Shop Message-ID: <20070521185008.36D2A40F32@volo.yukidoke.org> I appreciate the appropriate, if not entirely intuitive, juxtaposition of items in aisle 7F of my local drug store. ![Aisle 7F: Health Care, Diet Needs, Ice Cream][1] [1]: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/images/aisle_7f.jpg URL: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20070521-00 From mako at atdot.cc Sat May 26 20:50:09 2007 From: mako at atdot.cc (copyrighteous) Date: Sat May 26 20:50:13 2007 Subject: [copyrighteous] State of Head Message-ID: <20070526205010.3F006417F9@volo.yukidoke.org> When [Mika][1] gave me a haircut a couple days ago, I was a little concerned she might give me a bad haircut. I realized I was worried because bad haircuts have become cool and I was afraid of looking [hip][2]. [1]: http://mika.yukidoke.org/nikki [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_%28contemporary_subculture%29 URL: http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20070525-00