Category Archives: Technology

ChapelHill, Government, LocalPolitics, Ruminations, Technology

Open Source Software: Good enough for Croatia, good enough for Chapel Hill

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As a citizen, I came to my first Chapel Hill Technology Advisory Board meeting with a list of technology-related propositions that would help our town increase transparency while improving operational effeciency. Part of my proposal hinged on the use of open source software (OSS) – software that is flexible, reliable, transparent, “evergreen” and, based on selecting the proper open licensing, always in the public domain.

Various U.S. and European Union jurisdictions have whole-heartedly adopted both open-standards and the open source software (OSS) that supports those formats. For instance, Massachusetts’ is requiring use of Open Document (ODF) formats for longterm document retention.

Under my initiative, our citizen-owned information assets – the town’s geographical, environmental, financial, governance [minutes of meetings, etc.] records – would remain free and forever unencumbered by proprietary format and software restrictions.

Oh, and it would save us taxpayers a chunk of bucks – like the $253,000 our town unnecessarily spent on Microsoft Office license renewals (we could’ve doubled some of our town’s social program outlays on that savings alone).

I had some success, both before and after I joined the town’s Tech Board, getting limited Council adoption of a few open governance proposals. Open source adoption was a tougher nut to crack as both top town management and some IT staff were highly resistive to change.

Today’s Newsforge carries an article on Croatia’s adoption of OSS.

Last month the Croatian government adopted an open source software policy and issued guidelines for developing and using open source software in the government institutions. The Croatian government is concerned that proprietary software leads to too much dependence on the software suppliers. Open source software will make the government’s work more transparent, according to the government’s document, entitled “Open Source Software Policy.”

The document includes the following guidelines:

  • Government institutions will choose and/or develop open source solutions as much as possible, instead of using closed source alternatives.
  • The government will support development of closed source solutions that use open standards for protocols and file formats, and which are developed in Croatia.
  • The government will support the use of open source programs and open standards outside of its institutions.
  • The government will support the use of open source solutions in educational institutions; both closed and open source solutions will be equally presented to students

Domagoj Juricic, deputy state secretary at the Central State Administrative Office for e-Croatia and the leader of this project, explains what made the government publish the policy: “The use of information technology in government administration bodies is increasingly becoming important. So far, most of the software we use is proprietary software, so we cannot modify or complement it, or link software from different vendors. These software products impose rigid commercial conditions of use and limit our possibilities. In this way, government administration bodies may be led into a dependent position on the supplier of the software. This could lead to closed information systems, which make the success and efficiency of our eAdministration project more difficult.

Beyond efficiencies, adaptability, etc. Croatia desired control of their information assets:

“The state administration bodies create and exchange a lot of electronic documents,” Juricic says. “There is a great danger that documents cannot be opened and presented in readable form after a certain time, because we don’t have the licence anymore of the proprietary software, or the vendor can seize support of the old types of documents. Therefore we require the state administration bodies to use open standards for creating electronic documents.”

Now, while the Council, which nearly unanimously and quite precipitously, ditched our Technology Board, the necessity for implementing open standards, adopting agile technology-enhanced work processes, using the ‘net and ‘net-based tools to improve transparency and increasing productivity have not gone away.

The citizen chorus is gone but the song remains to be sung. Supposedly the Council will redress this issue come Fall.

And, yes, like many things in life that are worthwhile, implementing these changes can and will be difficult. Croatia’s government realizes that, so should we.

Kosturjak warns against euphoria with the policy. “Although the Croatian open source community is very positive about the open source software policy, we’ll see how serious the Croatian government is when the next step comes: the implementation of the policy. This will not be easy, as there are obvious practical problems. For example, most of the government bodies have now proprietary technologies together with proprietary file formats implemented in their IT systems. Migration to open standards and open source software can be technically difficult and painful. From the non-technical point of view, this is also a political and financial issue. We (the open source advocates) hope that the Croatian government will have the strength to actually implement the open source policy. Until that moment, the policy is just like an unsent letter.”

ChapelHill, CitizenWill, Government, LocalPolitics, Ruminations, Technology

Flaming Dell

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You know your brand is in trouble when tonight’s opening skit on David Letterman features your CEO running around on stage consumed by fire.

Of course, Jeff Jarvis, the ‘blogging bullet that Dell shot itself in the foot with, can personally tell you how hot the flames of Dell hell burn.

Luckily, as Jeff observes (after a dose of Doc Searl’s ClueTrain koolaid), the power curve between consumer and producer is beginning to invert:

We are customers with our money in our fists, spending it wisely and joining together to spend it more wisely. And we are producers who can compete with the companies that thought of us as mere consumers.

So nevermind caveat emptor. This is the age of caveat venditor — let the vendor beware — and caveat creator.

Responding to a Dell PR sock puppet that criticized his criticism, Jeff fulminates thusly,

You — since you to speak for Dell — owe me a product that works. You owe me service that serves. You owe me reliability and value. You are the ones holding me hostage; you have my thousands of dollars and I have your bad products. I not only have the right but the responsibility to tell others about my experiences with Dell.

But I’ll say again that I didn’t organize that mob. The mob organized itself; I merely provided the convenient town square on which to light those torches. This is how the internet works: It brings us together and we learn from each other.

You see, in the old days, you could screw one customer with one bad product or you could insult one customer with bad service. But no more. Now, when you deal with one customer, you deal with all customers.

That, ma’am, is the real public relations. That is dealing with your public as your customers.

And that is the real branding. Your brand is your reputation, your trust, your value. You don’t own your brand; your customers do.

Elected folk of the world, substitute citizen/taxpayer for customer, Chapel Hill/Carrboro for Dell and you might get a sense where we’re going with local governance once we, the self-organizing mob, begin to meet on our new ‘net-based Town Commons.

CivilLiberties, Government, Orthogonal, Ruminations, Technology

Hot Spot U.S.A: Apparently Boone, NC

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Following Mark K.’s lead in succumbing to some mid-Summer zaniness….

It appears Appalachian State University, located up in the North Carolina mountains [MAP], is also HOT! HOT! HOT!

Click to watch.

On a more serious note, what fearful impulse lead ASU to add a DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) link to the bottom of each of their web pages? Students are even directed to ASU’s designated DMCA enforcement agent to report on their fellow students violations:

Appalachian State University has designated an agent to receive notification of alleged copyright infringement.

Judith Walker
Academic Computing Services
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC, 28608
828-262-6272

email: dmca@appstate.edu

There must be an interesting [1] backstory [2] here for an academic institution to knuckle under to an act that the Electronic Frontier Foundation describes thus:

In practice, the anti-circumvention provisions have been used to stifle a wide array of legitimate activities, rather than to stop copyright infringement. As a result, the DMCA has developed into a serious threat to several important public policy priorities:

The DMCA Chills Free Expression and Scientific Research.
Experience with section 1201 demonstrates that it is being used to stifle free speech and scientific research. The lawsuit against 2600 magazine, threats against Princeton Professor Edward Felten’s team of researchers, and prosecution of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov have chilled the legitimate activities of journalists, publishers, scientists, students, programmers, and members of the public.

The DMCA Jeopardizes Fair Use.
By banning all acts of circumvention, and all technologies and tools that can be used for circumvention, the DMCA grants to copyright owners the power to unilaterally eliminate the public’s fair use rights. Already, the movie industry’s use of encryption on DVDs has curtailed consumers’ ability to make legitimate, personal-use copies of movies they have purchased.

The DMCA Impedes Competition and Innovation.
Rather than focusing on pirates, many copyright owners have wielded the DMCA to hinder their legitimate competitors. For example, the DMCA has been used to block aftermarket competition in laser printer toner cartridges, garage door openers, and computer maintenance services. Similarly, Apple invoked the DMCA to chill RealNetworks’ efforts to sell music downloads to iPod owners.

The DMCA Interferes with Computer Intrusion Laws.
Further, the DMCA has been misused as a general-purpose prohibition on computer network access which, unlike most computer intrusion statutes, lacks any financial harm threshold. As a result, a disgruntled employer has used the DMCA against a former contractor for simply connecting to the company’s computer system through a VPN.

Unintended Consequences: Seven Years Under the DMCA

ASU, that’s not so hot, hot, hot…

Media, Orthogonal, Ruminations, Technology

Hot Spot U.S.A.

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With tomorrow’s temperatures forecasted to be above 100 degrees, Chapel Hill is going to be one very hot spot.

As if centrally scripted, local news folks, punching up the drama of the weather story, have been issuing dire warnings not of the “real” heat but of the “felt” heat. “Think it’s going to be hot tomorrow? With the heat index, that 100 degrees will feel like a thousand!” Etc. Ad nauseum.

For the last 35 years, I’ve always assumed the “heat index” was a bit of a bugaboo – a pseudo-science calculation surfing the collective American conscience with little or no factual underpinnings.

Well, turns out there is a calculation:

HI = -42.379 + 2.04901523T + 10.1433127R – 0.22475541TR – 6.83783×10 -3 T 2 – 5.481717×10 -2 R 2 + 1.22874×10 -3 T 2R + 8.5282×10 -4 TR 2 – 1.99×10 -6 T 2 R 2

where

T = ambient dry bulb temperature degrees Fahrenheit
R = relative humidity
The equation is only useful for temperatures 80 degrees or higher, and relative humidities 40% or greater.
NOAA National Weather Service chart of Heat Index
That looks rather ad-hoc to this curious science guy, so I delved a bit deeper and found this commonly cited article [PDF] explaining the genesis of the equation.

Now that summer has spread its oppressive ridge over most of the Southern Region, NWS phones are ringing off their hooks with questions about the Heat Index. Many questions regard the actual equationused in calculating the Heat Index. Some callers are satisfied with the response that it is extremely complicated. Some are satisfied with the nomogram (see Attachment 1). But there are a few who will settle for nothing less than the equation itself. No true equation for the Heat Index exists. Heat Index values are derived from a collection of equations that comprise a model. This Technical Attachment presents an equation that approximates the Heat Index and, thus, should satisfy the latter group of callers.

The Heat Index (or apparent temperature) is the result of extensive biometeorological studies. The parameters involved in its calculation are shown below (from Steadman, 1979). Each of these parameters can be described by an equation but they are given assumed magnitudes (in parentheses) in order to simplify the model.

  • Vapor pressure. Ambient vapor pressure of the atmosphere. (1.6 kPa)
  • Dimensions of a human. Determines the skin’s surface area. (5′ 7″ tall, 147 pounds
  • Effective radiation area of skin. A ratio that depends upon skin surface area. (0.80)
  • Significant diameter of a human. Based on the body’s volume and density. (15.3 cm)
  • Clothing cover. Long trousers and short-sleeved shirt is assumed. (84% coverage)
  • Core temperature. Internal body temperature. (98.6°F)
  • Core vapor pressure. Depends upon body’s core temperature and salinity. (5.65 kPa)
  • Surface temperatures and vapor pressures of skin and clothing. Affects heat transfer from the skin’s surface either by radiation or convection. These values are determined by an iterative process.
  • Activity. Determines metabolic output. (180 W m-2 of skin area for the model person walking outdoors at a speed of 3.1 mph)
  • Effective wind speed. Vector sum of the body’s movement and an average wind speed. Angle between vectors influences convection from skin surface (below). (5 kts)
  • Clothing resistance to heat transfer. The magnitude of this value is based on the assumption that the clothing is 20% fiber and 80% air.
  • Clothing resistance to moisture transfer. Since clothing is mostly air, pure vapor diffusion is used here.
  • Radiation from the surface of the skin. Actually, a radiative heat-transfer coefficient determined from previous studies.
  • Convection from the surface of the skin. A convection coefficient also determined from previous studies. Influenced by kinematic viscosity of air and angle of wind.
  • Sweating rate. Assumes that sweat is uniform and not dripping from the body.

From Rothfusz, L. P., 1990:The heat index equation (or, more than you ever wanted to know about heat index). NWS Southern Region Technical Attachment, SR/SSD 90-23, Fort Worth, TX.

So, to be as accurate as possible, tomorrow, if you’re 5’7″ 147 pounds, wearing long trousers and a short-sleeved shirt made of %80 air, have an average human diameter (unlike my 46″ waist), plan only to walk 3.1 MPH and sweat uniformally, it’ll feel like a bazillion degrees.

Media, Ruminations, Technology

Barcamp Bar None

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Saturday, July 22nd’s RDU Barcamp should be a yearly highpoint for the Triangle tech community.

A “who’s who” of producers and consumers on ‘net-related tech will gather (@ 8 am as ibiblio’s Paul Jones notes) to thrash through some of today’s trendier tech topics.

As local social justice activist (and newly minted groom) BrianR, over at Yesh.com, observes, UNC’s Fred Stutzman has gone above and beyond planning what promises to be an incredible tech unconference

Fred Stutzman has a written a wonderful post called Advice for Planning a Bar Camp. It contains a lot of excellent info about how to plan an unconference. In this case doing it BarCamp style. The RDU BarCamp is this Saturday July 22. (Congratulations Fred for pulling this off. I’m sure the event will be a huge success!)

and documented how to put together such a beast.

Excellent way to wag the long tail Fred!

Continue reading Barcamp Bar None →

CivilLiberties, Media, Ruminations, Technology

Copyright Comic Book

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Local IndyWeek reporter Fiona Morgan covers the story of a “copyright comic” in the tech-oriented magazine Wired.

Fair-use is an important tool for online activisim, as is copyright. Many online authors, for instance, use a Creative Commons content license to ensure widest dissemination of their message.

To make the issue a bit more digestable, three law professors (two from Duke) created the comic book: Bound by Law.

Practicing what they preach, the comic book is freely available under a Creative Commons license.

Fiona routinely covers tech-related issues for the IndyWeek, for example, this week’s important coverage of NC ‘net neutrality and media consolidation.

Just as consumers are becoming aware of things like net neutrality and media consolidation, Congress and the North Carolina legislature are acting like nobody’s paying any attention.

…on June 13, the Finance Committee of the N.C. House passed the Video Service Competition Act without amending any of the no-brainer changes suggested by public interest groups that would have made it a little less of a travesty. A state version of the Internet TV provisions currently winding through U.S. Congress, this bill would abolish the current rules governing cable television service. Telephone companies such as Verizon and BellSouth have been pushing hard for this bill, because it would allow them to expand from broadband Internet to video service without having to negotiate with local governments. The bill will soon go to the full House for a vote; the Senate version, having passed one committee, makes one more committee stop before going to the floor.

Thanks go to ibiblio’s Paul Jones for the story tip.

CivilLiberties, Government, LocalPolitics, Media, Ruminations, Technology

One nation controlled by the medium…

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Those who control the present control the past. Those who control the past control the future.

– Orwell, author 1984

Those who control our modern means of communication are free to manipulate the past, recast the present and shape the future. Powerful, greedy, immoral – the masters of our converging media/medium empires already trample heavily upon the newly emerging Town Commons.

Unfortunately, with today’s House vote destroying Internet neutrality, a vote generally along party lines, the monopolists now have untrammeled freedom to despoil the Commons.

What is Internet neutrality?

Continue reading One nation controlled by the medium… →

Government, Media, Ruminations, Technology

NC Lottery: Powerball is powerless…

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11PM local news:

  • WTVD 11 leads with today’s Powerball snafu problems.
  • WRAL 5, after leading with nearly 4 minutes of ‘Canes news, covered the glitch.
  • NBC17, bless their hearts, led with about 5 minutes of ‘Canes game review and didn’t make it to the State’s newest con-game until 6 stories in .

NBC17 also deserves kudos for being the only station to mention the extremely long odds, 1 in 146 million, of winning the ‘ball.

WTVD was a bit breathless in their coverage – the news guy excitedly telling us “we’ll have to wait until tomorrow’s drawing”.

WRAL played up the “inconvenience” people had waiting to squander their bucks.

I’m going to give WRAL a small break because they did a nice piece  on the expected correlation between counties with high unemployment and high ticket sales.

Wilson County has the fourth highest unemployment rate in the state and often ranks No. 1 in ticket sales per capita. Nine other North Carolina counties selling the most tickets per adult have unemployment rates above the state’s average.

“It is not unexpected,” said state Sen. Janet Cowell. “I think that is what other states that have lotteries have seen.” Cowell explained that is part of why she opposed the lottery all along.”It really is a regressive tax, essentially, that really impacts lower income communities, not higher income communities,” she said.

“I don’t think that has any conflict with us,” said Wilson County’s Employment Security Commission manager, Terri Williams. “We’re here to help them find work and to help them with unemployment until they can find work.”Williams believes continued fallout from several plant layoffs and seasonal tobacco cuts are more to blame, but admits, “Of course, we hate to see the poor spending money on lottery tickets.”

Yep, so today’s computer snafu isn’t the only glitch we’ve seen in the system.

Government, Ruminations, Technology

Can you hear me now? Not if you’re the FCC!

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Following in the footsteps of Bush’s Justice department, the FCC has thrown in the towel on further investigations of allege crimes by Bellsouth, Verizon and others.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will not pursue complaints about a spy agency’s access to millions of telephone records because it cannot obtain classified material, the FCC’s chairman said in a letter released on Tuesday.

Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, had asked communications regulators to investigate a newspaper report that AT&T Inc. (T.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Verizon Communications (VZ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and BellSouth Corp. (BLS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) gave access to and turned over call records to help the National Security Agency fight terrorists.

“The classified nature of the NSA’s activities makes us unable to investigate the alleged violations,” FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said in the May 22 letter to Markey.

Verizon and BellSouth have denied turning over telephone call records to the NSA. BellSouth has demanded USA Today retract claims in its story.

“We can’t have a situation where the FCC, charged with enforcing the law, won’t even begin an investigation of apparent violations of the law because it predicts the administration will roadblock any investigations citing national security,” Markey said in response to Martin.

Reuters

Nothing to see here. Move along, move along…

Government, Ruminations, Technology

That old family jalopy…

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We’re probably going to replace one of our vehicles in the near future. Hybrid or bio-diesel?

My brother has a Honda he gets great mileage out of… Toyota has the new Camry (a car I can comfortably sit in) and the established Prius. Consumer Reports, among others, have published reports showing that the advertised MPGs don’t always add up to a substantial savings.

Xan, over at FORTH GO, reports on his Prius experience, including mileage, covering the first 8 months of Prius ownership.

Thanks for the field report Xan.

CivilLiberties, Government, Ruminations, Technology

Fiber is Future Proof

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[ UPDATE: ]

One of the best forums I’ve attended in the last 6 years!

Kudos to Laurin for organizing the program, Casey, Lynda, Ray, Chad and Shannon! They all did fantastic presentations covering a broad range of muni-networking issues – NPO-model, governmental operational efficiencies, collaboration, school and community usage, etc.
[ Original Post: ]

The municipal networking forum has kicked off.

Casey Lide, of Baller Herbst , has started out with a broad overview of business models, technologies and reasons for municipal networking.

Casey brings up the “holy grail” of FTTH (fibre-to-the-home). It’s capital intensive, but as he says, “Fibre is future proof.”

Amen!

Plenty of room and plenty of time if you want to come down….

CivilLiberties, Government, Technology

Utility Commission on the ball…

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Kudos to the folks running our NC Utilities Commission!

When the USA Today story fingering Bellsouth’s complicity in the NSA scandal broke I called our North Carolina Utilities Commission to lodge a complaint. The receptionist told me a “consumer specialist” would call within the hour to get details about my case. “Sure,” I said, pretty much expecting I’d have to call back over several days to reach the right person – that’s what we’ve grown to expect from all levels of government, right?

Within the hour, I got that call. The gentleman was direct, knowledgeable and filed the complaint without hesitation. He also said he’d follow up with any developments.

Today he did.

The case has been forwarded to the FCC, which is acting as a clearinghouse for a number of states. In addition, my case will continue at the State level until resolved by the FCC investigation.

This level of competence and service by the Utility Commission folks gives me confidence that they’ll be able to handle any fastballs the communications monopolists throw Chapel Hill’s way as the community forges ahead on the municipal network project.

Government, Technology

Technology Board: Raymond, Party of One.

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Town IT lead Bob Avery and I constituted the sole attendance at tonight’s Technology Board swan song.

During the recently well-attended dissolution of the Horace-William’s Committee, the committee members wrangled out some excellent final advisory language for Council.

Tonight, the tech board was supposed to discuss and pass on 8 final recommendations/observations to Council. Most folks had already expressed their concerns about the “lame duckness” of our final efforts, but I thought we had a consensus on, as one member put it, “a way to wrap up things nice and neat.”

Maybe, as some suggested, it wasn’t worth the effort to advise, one last time, a Council that has generally failed to follow through on our recommendations they approved.

Maybe our Mayor’s recent dismissal of the importance of technology in the new town manager selection process doused the membership’s spirits.

Maybe it was just “board fatigue”.

While I don’t have a quorum to endorse those final thoughts, I’ll present them here for completeness when I get a copy.