Today is the Day Against DRM and there are 10 things you can do to oppose DRM. The DefectiveByDesign.org group has been steadily opposing DRM, teaching people what DRM is and why it matters in their daily life, and linking us to anti-DRM projects around the world. In my post opposing Wil Wheaton’s unquestioning support [...]
Edd Dumbill, a programmer, wrote about moving from a GNU/Linux system to MacOS X, a proprietary operating system. His complaints about GNU/Linux will resonate most deeply with the open source audience because a free software user will note the absence of software freedom discussion. Dumbill notes that fonts look better on MacOS X. I find [...]
Robert X. Cringely blogs about the misuse of so-called “unlimited” usage. Entertaining so long as you’re not a Verizon customer. Apparently 5 gigabytes of data is the limit for their so-called “unlimited” plan. If you download more than that in a month, your connection is cut off and you’re expected to pay a fee for [...]
Microsoft’s “Windows Genuine Advantage” is a push for encouraging users of illicitly licensed Microsoft proprietary software to pay for legally licensed copies. Microsoft sends out a program with system updates which checks over the entire Microsoft Windows system and informs the user if the program concludes that some Microsoft program is not “genuine”. Of course, [...]
In what is turning out to be an ongoing series here on Digital Citizen, Apple has pulled another stunt on their customers: Endgadget.com says that Apple is upsampling lower resolution videos. In other words, Apple starts with a video at a rather low resolution and sells copies of it. Then they blow up that low [...]
MacOS X software is commonly distributed in an installer package file which allows the user to easily add new programs to their system by double-clicking an icon and dragging a program to the folder where applications are stored. According to various sources, there is a problem with the MacOS X installer program. Six weeks ago, [...]
After much bad press about Apple’s hardware failing including causing two instances of minor burns to people handling the machines, Apple has issued a recall on a bunch of bad batteries in their customer’s iBooks. Mike Pinkerton mentions a colleague’s Apple iBook battery won’t be recalled and asks The odd thing is that all the [...]
I’m starting a new tag with this article—Technical—where I’ll cover technical subjects with little or no explanation of the jargon. These topics are not intended for the novice or the uninitiated. Everyone’s free to read and participate in the discussion, of course, but sometimes I feel like getting to the heart of the matter more [...]
GNU Software Freedom Law Center FSF blogs Electronic Frontier Foundation Nina Paley Richard Stallman