Stay Free! Daily

The new Apple Potato®

My New Favorite Thing: Ubuntu Linux

If you know what linux is, you also probably know a super geek who can't help but extol how much better it is than Mac OS X and Windows.  And you probably can't remember what else they said because you stopped listening.  At the risk of becoming one of those super geeks, just hear me out.

Linux has been around since the early '90s and is the most prominent example of free software and open source development, just above OpenOffice.  While OpenOffice functions as a free alternative to purchasing popular and expensive licensed software like Microsoft's Office Suite ($150 for students, to $650 for a "full version"), Linux is more than a computer program, it's the operating system.  Windows and OS X are operating systems.

While operating systems are usually hidden in the cost of a computer, your OS actually costs money when you need an upgrade.  The recent Windows Vista upgrade could cost $100-$250.  An OS X Tiger upgrade is $129. These are recurring costs that can come up every few years. Linux, however, is free. And all the other programs for linux that you may want are also free. 

But there are plenty of reasons to consider open-source software beyond cost. Many people see more stability, security, faster start up times, less need to restart, less maintenance and other performance benefits. And, there's the other kind of free - like freedom from using proprietary software from the company owned by the richest person on the planet.

I must admit, I had no inclination to use Linux until a few weeks ago when I discovered Unbuntu Linux. A mail program, web browser, and office software are included. The "exposé" tricks I've become dependent on in OS X are available (and more). It will work with an iPod. The installation is simple, and the interface looks clean and polished.  The OS can be run from a CD if you want to try it out.  You can dual-boot and switch back and forth from one OS to another (on intel macs too) so you don't have to commit completely.

One of the best features is the "Synaptic Package Manager."  Say you want to install VLC, a video player that seems to be able to handle any file one can throw at it.  Open the Synaptic Package Manager and search for VLC.  It finds the files, downloads them for you, installs the program, and tells you when it's done. No searching the web for the right version.  Looking for something like Illustrator or Dreamweaver, but don't know the Linux version? Go to osalt.com and find open source versions. Search for it in Synaptic Package Manager, and it will install it for you.  Say you don't want to install Ubuntu?  Dell has begun shipping new computers with Ubuntu pre-installed.

For people who use their computer for email, the web, instant messaging, word processing or spreadsheets, and to manage their music and digital photos, Unbuntu is a perfectly viable option. Of course, Linux is not without a learning curve, but every OS has a learning curve. So why not go with the free one?

 

Miss Manners Goes Modern

Etiquette experts are scrambling to keep up with the technological advances that create new challenges to our pre-existing system of manners. Last night, for example, I received my first wrong-number text message. What was the proper thing to do? Ignore it? Write back and politely inform the sender of the error? I am only allotted a certain number of text messages per month; does this factor into my decision? If I pay for each message received, am I entitled to compensation?

I read the mystery message again. "Wanna do dodgeball Saturday nite?"

I carefully considered all the options, and sent my reply: "Nah, I think it's time we both grow up a little."

The Wall Street Journal on Planned Obsolescence (2002)

Commenters have raised some good questions about the veracity of author Giles Slade's claims, so I thought I'd post this 2002 article on planned obsolescence from those radical rabble-rousers at the Wall Street Journal.

As of Tuesday, July 16, 2002                      

Companies Slash Warranties, Rendering Gadgets Disposable

By JANE SPENCER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

A combination of shorter warranties and design changes means that
buyers of even relatively expensive gadgets now have little choice
but to throw them in the trash if anything breaks.

In the past year Dell Computer has slashed warranty periods from
three years to one. Apple Computer's hot iPod digital-music player
comes with only a 90-day warranty. And Sony requires purchasers to
register to get a full year of support on a Clie organizer --
otherwise, they, too, get 90 days. In addition, many contracts on new
consumer electronics are riddled with strict conditions: The one-year
warranty on RCA digital camcorders, for example, covers only labor
costs for 90 days.

Even if people want to pay for repairs out of their own pockets, some
gadget makers are cutting off that option as well. Many hand-held
organizers from companies such as Handspring, Palm and
Hewlett-Packard have built-in rechargeable batteries that generally
can't be replaced without sending the entire unit back to the
company. (Typical cost: $120.) Two earlier Palm models, the V and Vx,
were actually glued shut; the heat required to open them risks
damaging the unit. Some Qualcomm cellphones also have batteries that
are sealed inside the unit. But sealed units aren't limited to the
small portable realm. VCRs throughout the '80s were built with a
removable bottom plate. Now, they are typically made out of one
plastic shell that is tricky to open even for a professional.

"We joke that we design landfills," says Darren Blum, a senior
industrial engineer at Pentagram Design, which builds portable
devices and computers for companies like H-P.

It's the latest chapter in the story of planned obsolescence, the
term coined to describe the trend of building things not to last. As
tech companies focus on pumping out new models, they aren't doing as
much to help customers retain their current ones. They spend less
time on product testing, and offer customers less help when the
products break or malfunction. The result: Many cellphones, PDAs and
other gadgets are essentially becoming disposable devices.

The pace of new-product development plays a big role. Palm, for
example, introduced just six new PDA models from 1996 to 1999. Since
then, it has come out with 16 new models. As the time allotted to
designing electronics has dropped from years to weeks, testing
cycles, too, have been compressed. "No one that I know exhaustively
tests anything that's built," says Prabha Gopinath, executive vice
president at TestQuest, which creates testing software used by
Handspring, Palm, Motorola and Nokia. "That goes for PDAs,
cellphones, any software that's out there."

Manufacturers say they do extensive testing and add that prices on
gadgets have dropped so much that it's cheaper to buy new than pay
for repairs. Between 1990 and 2001, average cellphone prices dropped
from $600 to $162. The average price of a CD player fell from $220 to
$85 over the same period.

But the newer the product, the shorter the life span: A
black-and-white TV sold in 1979 lasted for about 12 years; today, a
cutting-edge LCD-screen TV is replaced after five. Laptop computers
need to be fixed every 16 months on average, while hand-held
organizers last an estimated two years.

Faster than Peanut Butter

Kareem Shehata, an engineering student from Ontario, Canada, goes
through Palm organizers faster than he goes through jars of peanut
butter. He has had seven Palms in the past three years. One was
"flaky," he says, and worked only if he shook it. Several developed
"this digitizer schizophrenia thing" where the screen wouldn't
register his stylus taps. Mr. Shehata opened up his seventh Palm and
temporarily fixed a loose component with a piece of Scotch tape, but
eventually, that one choked too. Palm replaced six of his broken
hand-helds with refurbished units, since the failures began under
warranty .

Warranty lengths tend to be standard within product categories. But
some lesser-known companies are offering longer warranties to ease
concerns about the reliability of their products. Budget PC maker
Atlas Micro offers a three-year warranty on most parts, and a
lifetime guarantee on labor. On the flip side, established companies
may try to leverage their brand image to get away with unusually
short warranties . Apple's iPod digital-music player offers just 90
days -- against a full year for many lesser-known MP3 makers.

Sony adds extra hurdles, requiring some hand-held customers to jump
online and click through a battery of questions about their
electronics-buying habits in order to get a full year of support.

Tech companies have taken the area of product support, once a
standard service, and turned it into something customers have to pay
extra for. The result is the current boom in the extended-warranty
industry, with profits going to tech companies and the retailers that
administer these programs.

High Repair Costs

Another way tech companies encourage upgrades is by setting repair
costs prohibitively high. At Palm, getting a replacement for a
cracked screen costs $125 -- even though Web-based repair companies
like GetHighTech.com manage to fix them for closer to $50. The site
also offers videos and guides to help users make basic repairs on
their units. STNECorp.com, another Web outfit, offers life-extending
repairs for Palms like button replacements.

But few customers know about these sites. In the end, many simply
decide it's easier to buy a newer-model gadget than run the service
gauntlet thrown down by the tech companies.

Updated July 16, 2002

Murderers, Bank Robbers and... Xbox Modders?

Jason Jones, 35, used to run the Acme Game Store out here in Los Angeles. It was next door to Gallery 1988, which hosts the annual 8-Bit Show that Stay Free's Jason Torchinsky mentioned last year. When Acme closed, I assumed it was because Jason simply wasn't pushing enough games to afford his lavish space. But no. As this post on LAist.com explains, Jason was arrested by federal agents for allegedly selling "modded" Xbox consoles. He is now serving time in a halfway house with decidedly more violent offenders. That's your Digital Millennium Copyright Act at work, folks!

Needlessly Electronic

By now you've I'm sure seen the news about the new "Here and Now" Monopoly, the one in which they replaced the wheelbarrow with McDonald's fries, the flat iron with a Starbuck's coffee, the car with a flying car. You may not have noticed, however, that the UK version of Here and Now also replaced the money with debit cards. I'm not going to get into what this may imply for the future our retail skills (although the American version did replace the real-world bank notes with bills on the magnitude of 200k and up). What I'm more interested in is that a previously people-powered game now requires batteries.

This summer, I went into the woods with some friends and a newly shrink-wrapped version of Scattergories. Imagine our gamerage when we opened the box to find the usual spring-wound timer replaced with an electronic one requiring batteries. And a screwdriver. Neither of which we had or were in proximity to having. What was wrong with the wind-up one? I'm assuming the battery-powered timer costs Hasbro a half-cent less to manufacture, and the rest of us that much more (for the batteries and the chemical waste). Middling, I know, but it all adds up.

Which brings me to the enMotion system of paper towel dispensers. They have quietly replaced every restaurant bathroom dispenser from here to everywhere in the past year or so. What was once hand-cranked now takes 4 D-cell batteries (and is apparently built not to dispense, the more frantically you wave your hands in front of it). Restaurateurs see it as a boon precisely because it is so hard to get the towels out. You can't yank out three yards, ball it up, and throw it on the floor.

What I want to know is: what's more of a waste? Chronic paper towel use or all the hundreds of thousands of batteries we're going to be tossing out? Anybody know how to figure that out?

A Call to Artists - and to Owners of Broken iPods

We hereby announce that Stay Free! is seeking artists and (broken) ipods for an upcoming project about planned obsolescence. Why does the portable player widely considered the hallmark of savvy design typically die in little over a year? Are ipods "made to break"? Or simply, as some critics have suggested, run-of-the-mill e-waste?

If you know someone who owns an iPod, chances are good that you know someone with a broken ipod. Environment groups have taken Apple to task for its dirty practices, and we'd like to join them -- by making lemonade out of lemons.

Here's what we're looking for:

I. TURN (BROKEN) IPODS INTO ART

Transform your broken ipod into something deliciously useless: finger puppet? toy car? coaster? Use your creatively to come with something beautiful, funny, or otherwise engaging. Take a photo and email it us with your contact information at temporary181 at stayfreemagazine.org. Favorite projects will be featured in Stay Free! and ultimately exhibited in New York (venue TBA).

Artists unable to find a broken ipod should contact us for assistance (though, due to our limited resources, we recommend asking your peers first).

Deadline: *** Friday, December 8 ***

II. SEND IN YOUR BROKEN IPODS

Don't have time to create something but want to help? Please donate your broken ipods to Stay Free!, a nonprofit organization. Donations are tax deductible. We'll distribute broken ipods to working local artists for this project.

Address:

Stay Free!
23 Hawthorne Street
Brooklyn, NY 11225

For more information about this project, stay tuned to www.ifrod.org.

BACKGROUND ON THE IPOD

"Good Luck with that Broken iPod"
New York Times (February 4, 2006)

"Pain in the Pod" 
Chicago Tribune/news services (July 24, 2006)

Greenpeace's Green My Apple campaign

Computer Take Back campaign

WHAT IS PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE?

The iPod Is Bad Garbage: An interview with Giles Slade

Get Grandma on IM!

In a dual effort to drag more gossipy old ladies online and to breathe some new life into the kids' IM lingo, I've spent a great deal of development and expensive computer time coming up with a new batch of IM little acronym thingies based on classic old-lady speak. By now I imagine we're all about ready to open our wrists if we have to read another lol, rotfl, imho, brb, or even lmfao.

So, here's a new batch of these strings of letters, guaranteed to please jaded IMer and old biddy alike!

mw: my word

win: well, I never!

htb: heavens to betsey!

wibamu: well I'll be a monkey's uncle!

imr: I mean, really!

yds: You don't say!

gg: Goodness gracious! (alt: good grief)

gh: Good heavens!

tle: The living end

itp: Isn't that precious?

cis: Charmed, I'm sure

n: No! (scandalized)

New Lingo? How Book!

As we text-messagers know, there's a mode that anticipates the word you're typing (1 keystroke per letter), rather than pecking out up to 4 keystrokes for each letter. The cellphone guesses the most common combination of those keys. If it guesses wrong, you press the "Next" button until the correct word appears.

My favorite wrong guess: When I try to type "cool," my phone says "book."

This is where you come in, Stay Free blog-reading demographic: Help me make "book" the new "cool." If your phone says "book," don't hit Next. Just leave it, brother. Then, start working "book" into conversations. "That youtube link you sent me was totally book." Or "You're writing a book? Very book!" You get the idea. It'll be viral.

That's my two cents. Well, two cents to receive, ten cents to send.

Bragging Rights

Twenty-plus years ago when I was in high school, Billy Bragg's records prepared me for heartache I would face, and authority I should question, in decades to follow. And although he was not able to brace me for the future of technology and its impact on music, I'm glad Bragg is still looking out for us.