How to Fix Everything | Motherboard

Posted on 2015-11-25 by arjaybe

The right to open up your stuff is under attack, but DIY fixers are keeping the art of repair alive.

Source: How to Fix Everything | Motherboard

iFixit is spearheading an attempt to make it not only easier, but in some cases legal, to repair your own stuff. The John Deere company tried to use copyright law to make it illegal for farmers to repair their tractors. Fortunately, a lawsuit pushed by iFixit recently resulted in a victory for farmers against this immoral behavior. Apple corporation began using an oddball screwhead to make it difficult, if not impossible, for their customers to even open their devices. If you can’t open it, you can’t repair it.

“That Apple and other electronics manufacturers don’t sell repair parts to consumers or write service manuals for them isn’t just annoying, it’s an environmental disaster,” (Kyle Wiens) says. “Recent shifts to proprietary screws, the ever-present threat of legal action under a trainwreck of a copyright law, and an antagonistic relationship with third-party repair shops shows that the anti-repair culture at major manufacturers isn’t based on negligence or naiveté, it’s malicious.”

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John Deere told the copyright office that allowing farmers and mechanics to repair their own tractors would “make it possible for pirates, third-party developers, and less innovative competitors to free-ride off the creativity, unique expression and ingenuity of vehicle software.”

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“We decided as a result of our research in the developing world that what the world needed was an open source repair manual for everything,” (Kyle Wiens) said. “There’s two ways of doing that—you get the manufacturers to open source their documents, or you write a new one. We have not given up on the first one, but we have focused our efforts on the second.”

Small victories give hope that progress will be made in this area, but the manufacturers still seem more intent on locking their customers out than on treating them with respect. Fortunately, we have people like Kyle Wiens and organizations like iFixit watching out for us.

How to Fix Everything article on Motherboard website.

rjb

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Pirate This Book

Posted on 2015-11-18 by arjaybe
Cover art by Piotr Czaplarski

Cover art by Piotr Czaplarski

Pirate This Book is the actual title of a book written by Linton Robinson. You can read about it on his website and you can download it from Smashwords, where it’s free, at Noisetrade, where it’s also free but you can leave a tip if you want to, and on Amazon, where they want you to pay 83 cents. I haven’t read the book, but I understand it’s a collection of stories and excerpts from the author’s work. He’s trying to employ the principle that, for non-best-selling authors, the important thing is getting your work out there. The problem for unknown authors isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity. So don’t worry about how many pirated copies of your book might be out there without having been paid for. Rejoice in the knowledge that it’s getting into the hands of potential readers. Be grateful that someone cared enough to pirate it.

Which brings me to the point of this post. Pirate this book. Download Green Comet and upload it to a torrent site. Take Parasite Puppeteers and put it in the hands of those scurrilous pirates. I want to see them everywhere. If I google Green Comet, I want to see pages of pirated copies. The same with Parasite Puppeteers. I just trawled about ten torrent sites and only one of them, Torrentz, had a link to Green Comet. Nobody had Parasite Puppeteers. I was disappointed. I was hurt. It’s embarrassing.

So, pirate this book. Please. You’ll make this ink-stained wretch happy.

rjb

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Thirty-nine Percent Majority

Posted on 2015-11-11 by arjaybe

39-percent-majority

Canada has a new government, and it feels like a bright new day. After years of steadily suppressing our better nature, the government now seems to be promising openness and optimism. Here is a previous post with some examples of the darkness, especially the muzzling of Canadian scientists. In it I remarked that a country that permits 39% of voters to elect a majority government should expect that sort of thing. But the thing is, this new majority government got just 39.5% of the popular vote. It seems we’ve gone from one thirty-nine percent majority to another.

Even so, it looks as if some things are set to improve, in particular the freedom of Canadian scientists to speak freely. That was encouraged by such publications as Nature and the Canadian Science Writers’ Association. And now it seems to be happening, as reported by The Star and The Huffington Post. Lifting the chill from our scientists is just one of the things this new government promised during the campaign. If it can fulfill those promises, or even most of them, then it will vindicate the feeling of a bright new day.

So, short term, things are looking up. But the long term problem remains. We still have a thirty-nine percent majority. Surely there are better ways to do this. Are there any examples of more democratic ways of electing a government?

rjb

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