27 Jun
This is a good video primer of the information revolution and the parts that all of us must play in it. Information is no longer locked up in walled gardens guarded by a few gatekeepers. It is alive and changing. We are charged with its maintenance.
The first few scenes remind me of what research was like when I was in college. Sometimes I can hardly believe how far we have come…
26 Jun
Sugar on a stick!
The MIT Technology Review has published an article detailing the latest efforts on behalf of the Sugar Labs project. The newest version of the Sugar operating system is designed to install on a USB thumb drive or CDROM. If it is installed on a thumb drive then user files can be written to it and saved in between sessions.
The underlying operating system is built on Fedora 11, which was just recently released. It represents a significant improvement from earlier versions of Sugar. The educational software has greatly improved along with overall stability.
This is an effort that I have been following with great interest since it was part of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. After OLPC decided to stop trying to use Linux in their revolutionary laptop, the main developers of the operating system left to pursue the project further. They have been busily improving the operating system and porting it to different architectures.
The best part is that a $200 computer can now be stored on a $5 USB key:
The open-source education software developed for the “$100 laptop” can now be loaded onto a $5 USB stick to run aging PCs and Macs with a new interface and custom educational software.
“What we are doing is taking a bunch of old machines that barely run Windows 2000, and turning them into something interesting and useful for essentially zero cost,” says Walter Bender, former president of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project. “It becomes a whole new computer running off the USB key; we can breathe new life into millions of decrepit old machines.”
It will be interesting to see if this incrementalist approach will be more successful long term than the original vision. Deploying massive amounts of cheap laptops to third world countries has not produced any outstanding successes yet. Time will tell how this works out. For now though, I’m going to try it out with my kids. I’m interested to see how they do with it.
You can find full details on the project in the Sugar Labs wiki.
25 Jun
Google Voice is finally here! You can sign up for it at www.google.com/voiceinvite.
23 Jun
Chris Good wrote an excellent article on internet surveillance in Iran. It isn’t as easy as you might think. Even though all network devices have the capability to monitor internet traffic, it can often be very difficult to track down an individual.
And, more broadly, how does Internet surveillance work? How can the government restrict, monitor, or find you if you’re doing something illegal/subversive?
As for the broader set of questions, Internet monitoring is done at multiple levels. Routers in homes have software that can restrict and track traffic–for consumers to use, for instance, to keep their kids from visiting websites and chat rooms deemed inappropriate. They also have software that lets users track when computers attempt to access those sites–monitoring, as opposed to blocking them.
That level of monitoring and restriction exists in most network systems, big and small–college dormitories, offices, Internet service providers (the companies you get your Internet from), and, in Iran’s case especially, the government.
So, in the U.S., Iran, and everywhere in the world, data on emails, websites visited, Instant Messenger conversations, tweets, YouTube uploads, blog posts, comments on blogs–and, outside the Internet, data on cell phone conversations, texts, video and picture messages–it’s all available. The government can find it, down to the IP address–the address of your specific computer or router–associated with Internet activity like comments on blogs, emails, etc.
In Iran, monitoring software (it is thought) allows government officials to look at a website or tweet and see the IP address it came from. All Internet traffic in and out of Iran travels through one portal–the Telecommunications Company of Iran (TCI)–though there are several service providers (ISPs) that operate below it. This makes it easier for Iran’s government to monitor traffic.
But if the Iranian government can get the IP addresses of people engaging in certain kinds of activity online, why haven’t we heard of the government knocking on people’s doors and arresting them for subversive YouTube videos, emails, and tweets?
The simple answer is that the Iranian government cannot easily tell the difference between a shared internet connection and individual connections. A college dormitory could be full of hundreds of students. Which one of them just uploaded that incendiary Youtube video? They also make use of advanced technologies such as proxy servers and encryption. The government must crack the encryption used in these connections before they can read the content.
One of those means is encryption–programs and services that mask the content of Internet activity. Monitoring people who use encryption, one can tell that they’re sending an email, for instance, but it’s unclear what’s in the email.
Two popular encryption services are Psiphon and Tor, specializing in delivering multimedia content (like videos recorded on cell phones and uploaded to YouTube) and browsing/IM/email anonymity, respectively.
Iran blocks sites, such as YouTube, that are deemed controversial. To get around that, Iranians have used proxy sites–dummy sites with different addresses that, in effect, take browsers to YouTube. There’s a strong chance that work is being done by the tech-savvy Iranian diaspora, Rohozinsky said, “Iranians outside Iran who have the savvy to create such a proxy and email family and friends back in Iran and say, ‘Here, use my proxy.’”
Iranian browsers get out past the government’s choke-hold on traffic by requesting the fake address; then, they upload videos to YouTube.
In other words, it’s not as if the government can track all Iranian traffic to YouTube: because it already blocks that traffic, Iranians are already obscuring their use of the site.
The only really effective way is to block all access to the internet for everyone. That has its own set of risks however. What happens to a country with no internet access? While the government is trying its best to shut down this form of communication, it simply can’t. There are simply too many lanes in the information superhighway to block them all.
16 Jun
14 Jun
Derek Leek & Douglas Ward Leading A Technology Workshop
Derek Leek (Conference Webmaster) and I were able to lead a technology workshop last week during annual conference. The title of the workshop was “Web Prescense, Web Schmesence. What the heck is a website and why do I need it?” We had a very interesting discussion with approximately 75 clergy, laity and a few conference staff people.
The discussion centered mainly on the latest blogging/website platforms. We showed the audience how easy it is to create a professional looking website using tools such as Blogger and WordPress. E-mail, document collaboration and shared calendaring was discussed via Google Apps. All of these solutions are free and relatively easy to set up and use.
Derek unveiled our new web hosting plan also. We can now host WordPress blogs for our local churches on our new WordPress-MU installation. Full domain names can be mapped to the subdomain on our server. Blogs can be set up at http://www.nccumc.net.
We are very excited about this new ministry opportunity. It is critically important that our local churches start reaching out to their community where they live. If we do not adopt the language of the people we will lose them. Hopefully we can start taking this presentation on the road and start meeting people. Overall it was a great workshop and we received excellent feedback. I hope we can do it again soon!
14 Jun
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing for California to adopt digital textbooks in favor if printed ones. This is an effort to help reign in an out of control budget deficit. This makes perfect sense. We expect our children to cart around half their body weight using textbooks that are often out of date before they are sent to the printers. Textbooks are traditionally distributed on a six year cycle! Money quote:
“So just think about the last six years, all the things that happened,” Schwarzenegger said Monday. “For instance, the Iraq war, the country’s first African-American president … all of this you wouldn’t have in those textbooks.”
A six year cycle? An entire class of students could pass through high school and not study these recent events! With the technology we have today, this is simply inexcusable. We must do something. Why not use open source textbooks? From the article:
While not all open-source books are free, they usually have more lenient copyright licenses than do print textbooks – or digital books provided by mainstream publishers. Educators can download and distribute them at will without facing additional costs. Typically, the cost of producing the text is offset by foundations or private donations.
The open source license makes perfect sense. This frees up students and teachers to be able to copy and use the information contained within the textbooks, free from the restrictions of traditional copyright. This important change would break the strict control on knowledge, granting the freedom to innovate, adapt and stay current with the latest information.
I was discussing issues of copyright just last week at our annual conference. Ten years ago when I was in college (ok, I’m dating myself here) almost no one had any computer equipment in the classroom. We carried around our textbooks and used ink pens and notebooks to take notes. Now when I visit a college campus everyone has laptops, iPods, iPhones, Blackberries etc… The times have changed. The educational opportunities are endless. I asked the question what education would look like in another ten years? The answer we came up with was that textbooks would be electronic. The lines will have blurred between print and digital such that a student would have one device that does everything. Perhaps I was wrong. It looks like ten years from now is going to happen a lot earlier than I thought.
