Unquiet Desperation

Mark Pilgrim’s “Tinkerer’s Sunset” is an excellent article discussing the chilling effect that so-called “appliances” portend for the generation of computer enthusiasts. It’s a thoughtful reflection on both trends in the law regarding the freedom to tinker:

When DVD Jon was arrested after breaking the CSS encryption algorithm, he was charged with “unauthorized computer trespassing.” That led his lawyers to ask the obvious question, “On whose computer did he trespass?” The prosecutor’s answer: “his own.”

If that doesn’t make your heart skip a beat, you can stop reading now.

And on the roadblocks which new “appliance” devices impose on would-be tinkerers:

The iPad is an attractive, thoughtfully designed, deeply cynical thing. It is a digital consumption machine. As Tim Bray and Peter Kirn have pointed out, it’s a device that does little to enable creativity…

The tragedy of the iPad is that it truly seems to offer a better model of computing for many people — perhaps the majority of people. Gone are the confusing concepts and metaphors of the last thirty years of computing. Gone is the ability to endlessly tweak and twiddle towards no particular gain. The iPad is simple, straightforward, maintenance-free…

The thing that bothers me most about the iPad is this: if I had an iPad rather than a real computer as a kid, I’d never be a programmer today. I’d never have had the ability to run whatever stupid, potentially harmful, hugely educational programs I could download or write. I wouldn’t have been able to fire up ResEdit and edit out the Mac startup sound so I could tinker on the computer at all hours without waking my parents.

Now, I am aware that you will be able to develop your own programs for the iPad, the same way you can develop for the iPhone today. Anyone can develop! All you need is a Mac, XCode, an iPhone “simulator,” and $99 for an auto-expiring developer certificate. The “developer certificate” is really a cryptographic key that (temporarily) allows you (slightly) elevated access to… your own computer. And that’s fine — or at least workable — for the developers of today, because they already know that they’re developers. But the developers of tomorrow don’t know it yet. And without the freedom to tinker, some of them never will.

If you’re like him or like me…one of the guys who got his start tinkering around with a computer in your basement, finding your way by intuition and discovery, please read his full post and pass it on.

Ray Slakinski, one of podcasting’s earliest innovators¹, has released a new content syndication specification into the wild. Called oSync, it’s goals are as follows:

• Easy/fast to parse and implement
• Make it so feeds and items are location aware
• a proper tagging system for feeds/items/attachments
• multiple attachments
• Able to be used cross-site/domain
  • Uses JSONP
• Incorporate some of the RSS extension elements that were used in common implementations

It is currently in an alpha state, but I see a lot of potential in this format. RSS is badly in need of an update — it has served us well, but the needs of developers and content providers are changing. A lightweight JSON-based information format will allow for a lot of flexibility in implementation as well as allow for ease of adoption – jQuery and other JavaScript frameworks can readily handle this format. I can see how working in this sort of format into Podiobooks 2.0 could aid in the creation of sharable widgets for displaying user data, title listings, and other data people want to include on their blogs or iPhone apps.

I’m curious to see how it develops. I’ve joined the Google Group for discussing the specification.

1. Ray created the base code for what would later become iPodderX, one of the first podcatching clients and certainly the one with the most features. I still miss it, and would give an awful lot to replace my iTunes with it.[back]

Aaron, the codeninja who is handling our current code merges and deploys, sent this out today. He leaves little doubt on which side of the code-freeze deadline you want to be.

Hi Everyone,
 
Please remember that the cutoff is NOON today, per the schedule.
 
Now may be a good time to wrap up what you’re working on, and probably not a good time to start anything new.
 
I once saw a woman late to the subway platform try to stop the closing train doors by swinging her shopping bag of expensive clothes between them. The doors closed and trapped the bag. Then the conductor, who could see what had happened, just pulled the train away with her on the platform and the bag still wedged in the door.

I’ve always admired that conductor.
 
-AO

To get Tweetdeck running on 64-bit, you’ll need to get the 32-bit compatibility libraries. The easiest way to do that is to do the following:

Download the getlibs-all.deb package. (This seems to move around a bit. If the link is broken, best to search it on Google.) Install it by running:

sudo dpkg -i getlibs-all.deb

If you get a corrupted package (which I did a few times), try another download location. The one I linked to above worked for me.

Next, put these commands in a bash script:

sudo getlibs -l libnss3.so.1d;
sudo getlibs -l libnssutil3.so.1d;
sudo getlibs -l libsmime3.so.1d;
sudo getlibs -l libssl3.so.1d;
sudo getlibs -l libnspr4.so.0d;
sudo getlibs -l libplc4.so.0d;
sudo getlibs -l libplds4.so.0d;
sudo getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so;
sudo getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so.0;
sudo getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so.0.1.1

Make it executable, then run it:

chmod +x getlibs.sh; sudo sh getlibs.sh;


Update all the library links¹:

sudo ldconfig

If you don’t already have Adobe AIR installed, go download the file, then execute it:

chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin; sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

Finally, go to the Tweetdeck site and click to install Tweetdeck.

Sources: http://blog.ddiction.com/?p=3023, , http://linux.die.net/man/8/ldconfig

1. ldconfig creates the necessary links and cache (for use by the run-time linker, ld.so) to the most recent shared libraries found in the directories specified on the command line, in the file /etc/ld.so.conf, and in the trusted directories (/usr/lib and /lib). ldconfig checks the header and file names of the libraries it encounters when determining which versions should have their links updated. [back]

I decided to tweak the theme of my G1 using DxTop and a Steampunk theme/icon set. Combining this with the Abney Park song “Herr Drosselmeyer’s Doll” as my ringtone, it makes for a nice change of pace.