My god, it's Full of Macs!

New York has canceled the electronics recycling programs they were holding and has decided to allow people to include toxic electronics in trash destined for land fills.  This is a bad decision for many reasons.  Remember when the city cancelled all recycling for a while?  Well, it’s taken years for New Yorkers to even realize that it’s started back up again, and some still don’t know.

“Until July 1, 2010, NYC residents can discard unwanted or broken electronics (computers, monitors, TVs, cell phones) in the trash”  -DSNY

If you want to recycle a computer, turns out Apple will help.  For every new Apple computer purchase, you can get free recycling.  Or for $30 you can purchase a pre-paid shipping label from Apple to send in your old computer.

Recycle even if you’re not buying a new Mac.

If you haven’t opted in to the free program by purchasing a new Mac, or if you live in Canada, you can still participate in the Apple Recycling Program. Just purchase a prepaid shipping label from the Electronic Recycling Program or call 888-638-2761. The $30 (U.S.) fee covers all costs associated with shipping used products to the Apple recycling vendor. We’ll even provide packaging materials if you need them.  Read more…

Even better, Apple offers FREE recycling of ANY mobile phone or iPod:

The Apple Recycling Program offers free and environmentally friendly disposal of your iPod and any manufacturer’s mobile phone.  Read more…

Tags: Apple, Environment

Gregory Donovan has posted a great critique of Rupert Murdoch’s World Media Summit speech.  Here’s Murdoch, as quoted in Donovan’s post, on “stealing” content:

“The Philistine phase of the digital age is almost over. The aggregators and the plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid-for content, it will be the content creators, the people in this hall, who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs will triumph.”

And part of Donovan’s critique:

“Like Gates’ before him, Murdoch willfully ignores the unwaged labor that he so handsomely profits from. Murdoch sees News Corp, AP, BBC, Xinhua, and the like, as the only rightful (and thus recognized) producers of content – just as Gates sees Microsoft’s hired programmers as the only rightful producers of his software. But what about the millions of MySpace users who freely produce untold volumes of content that News Corp then monetizes for a hefty profit?  What about all the blogs that News Corps’ journalists read and take information from without so much as a citation, never mind compensation. What about all the people that freely participate in beta-testing Microsoft’s software and the millions of software “users” who report problems and freely contribute their time and energy to improving Microsoft’s content? If it’s obvious that “there should be a price paid for quality content” — which I’m willing to support — then how much will News Corp be paying for all the free quality content it uses, and how will it compensate all the unwaged labor it uses?”

Continue reading…

Tags: capitalism, Environment, security, Trust, Users Rights

Yes, Apple, it’s pretty.  But – by making the wireless keyboard and mouse the standard with your iMacs – aren’t you just adding piles of garbage to landfills?  Why doesn’t the iMac have a built-in battery charger for the “Magic Mouse” – that would really be magical.

I’m going to keep the wired keyboard and mouse for our specifications. What do you think?  Would you rather have this mouse, even with the environmental cost?

Tags: Apple, Environment, Lab Management

There is a lingering mythology about Macs being expensive and Windows PCs being more affordable – which is easily debunked if you look at the specs of a new Mac vs. a Dell & compare all the software included with OS X.  This extends into the realm of servers as well.  Have a look at this great chart from AppleInsider comparing the cost of a Windows Server with an OS X Server.

Read the whole article here.

What’s the difference between the operating system and the retail store environment?  OS X, iTunes, Disney Stores?  It all makes sense in light of this strange news from Mac Rumors:

The New York Times reports that The Walt Disney Company is planning a ground-up revival of its retail stores using a high-tech “Imagination Park” concept and has turned to Steve Jobs and the retail store team at Apple for assistance with the project. Jobs became a member of Disney’s Board of Directors and the largest individual Disney shareholder when the company acquired Pixar in early 2006.

The involvement of Mr. Jobs, the Apple chief executive who joined the Disney board with the 2006 acquisition of Pixar, is particularly notable. For the first time, Mr. Jobs’s fingerprints can be seen on Disney strategy, in the same way that he influenced the look and feel of Apple’s own immensely popular retail chain. While Mr. Jobs did not personally toil on the Imagination Park concept, he pushed Disney to move far past a refurbishment.

“Dream bigger — that was Steve’s message,” said Andy Mooney, chairman of Disney Consumer Products.

Jobs reportedly provided Disney with inside information on Apple’s retail store development and operations, as well as allowing Disney executive to visit the Apple campus and convincing the company to build a prototype retail store to aid in refining the customer experience.

Disney’s “Imagination Park” concept apparently carries several other Apple-like aspects to it, from in-store theater areas to mobile checkout technology for sales associates. The concept has reportedly been approved by the Disney Board of Directors, and the company is currently negotiating with landlords to secure the high-profile locations necessary for the concept.

Tags: Apple

Usually when we hear about BitTorrent or peer-to-peer file sharing, it’s in the context of ‘pirated’ software or ‘illegal’ music sharing.  They’re not the same, they shouldn’t be confused and I’ll explain why.

(A series of men’s restrooms?  Nope, Peer-to-Peer.)

What is BitTorrent used for? BitTorrent is used to share large files.  Researchers at universities use it to share data.  Media make programming available through BitTorrent ( for example, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation), Amazon offers users BitTorrent capabilities in their online file storage service, the content for World of Warcraft is distributed through BitTorrent.  It’s being used everywhere for ‘legitimate’ purposes.

Let’s talk about what constitutes a ‘legitimate’ use of the network on computers in a university environment.  What’s obviously ‘legitimate’? – email, blogging, building web sites?  But spam is email and it’s not considered an acceptable  activity.  A blog full of stolen credit card numbers is blogging, but it would be considered a crime.  And what about a web site that incites violence?

It’s easy to see that activity on the internet is not identical to the technology used to perform the activity.  The technology is a tool.  Email is a tool.  BitTorrent is also a tool.  In reality, I think it’s more complex than that – but for now, let’s think of them as simply tools and without any moral value attached.

(How will you use your tool?)

Research by ipoque has shown that BitTorrent is the dominant protocol on the internet.  That means it’s used more than http, the protocol used to serve and access web pages.  To put it another way, BitTorrent is used more widely than web sites. That’s a popular tool!

Yes, BitTorrent can also be used to share a copyrighted music or video file without the permission of the copyright owner, but so can email, ftp and http and CDs and DVDs and hard drives.  With Gmail’s allowed attachment sizes, for example, you can send entire albums of music in one email.  But where is the effort to ban or stop email?

(This is not a crime.)

The RIAA has mounted a massive campaign against BitTorrent users – prosecuting them for sharing music.  But this isn’t a new activity.  When I was a kid we would copy albums onto cassette tapes and give them to our friends – this was never called ‘a crime.’  But now that the recording industry’s mode of operating is no longer profitable, they’re trying to criminalizing sharing.  They ought be spending that time re-evaluating their mode of operating, but that’s another post.

Even if they succeed and even if it is ‘illegal’ to ’share music’ – BitTorrent (and other peer-to-peer sharing protocols) is and should remain a legal, usable, and useful protocol for sharing large files.  As Manuel Castells said in the M. Nathan W. Levin Lecture at the New School in 2007 “The hackers built the network and they built it open.”

So, if you’re told that you can’t run file sharing software or BitTorrent isn’t allowed – ask why.  Ask why they don’t want you to engage in a legal file sharing practice.

(Well, not these hackers…)

Want to give it a try and download something?

First, you need an application, you can read about some options here:

http://torrentfreak.com/mac-bt-clients/

And here are some free sites for legal torrents:

http://www.legaltorrents.com/

http://www.publicdomaintorrents.com/

http://www.legittorrents.info/

http://www.bittorrent.com/

http://2007.sxsw.com/toolbox/

http://bt.etree.org/

http://www.zudeo.com/

http://www.torrentfreak.com/

http://linuxtracker.org/

Tags: Collaboration, Privacy, security, sharing, Users Rights

This is a survey of images that result from a G**gle search of the term “computer security.”  I find it fascinating how quickly some in the academic environment subscribe to someone else’s ’security’ discourse.

(Does anyone have a door that actually takes a key like this? Is this what the internet’s door looks like?)

(This luggage lock is (not) ’securing’ this keyboard or anything else.)

(Superman wore green today and only a giant orbital lock can stop him from reversing the earth’s rotation.)

(This monitor is secured with an enormous materializing chain and lock – too bad it’s not connected to anything.)

(The space burglar is connected to Africa through a billion mile cable – and he brought your computer to space so he could pull the giant lever on the side.)

(Really?)

Snow Leopard

We’ve begun upgrading the Macs at the Graduate Center to OS X 10.6.

Along with this upgrade, we’re implementing some other changes.  We are no longer asking users to authenticate with Active Directory credentials in order to use the Macs in public areas.  Users will not have to log in with their name and password in order to use all the applications on Macs in the Library, student computing areas and departmental lounges.

We’re implementing this change because our Mac users have had chronic problems saving files to their network drives and using applications that rely on saving to network drives.  My first concern is making certain that users can actually use the technology, without anything standing in the way, and this change is the best way to make that happen.

Password Liberation

There is an additional benefit that comes with this change.  All students, faculty and staff can now use our Macs without worrying about passwords.  And once the user is done and they log out, all trace of their presence and activity is deleted from that computer.  This is a dramatic increase in privacy for our users and frees them from having to worry about their password or account being up to date.  As it is, most students I talk to use a non-CUNY email account as their primary email, so they often have problems when they are asked to use the CUNY account because the password has expired.

But what about printing and other network services that require an account?  If the user wants to access any network services that require authenticating against Active Directory, they can do so à la carte  -  they choose to connect to the service (printing, network drives, etc.) and authenticate for each service.

This à la carte model flies in the face of current trends.  Everyone says they want ’single sign on’ – which means, you log in once and everything else uses that authentication to give you services.  But, I wonder, what if you want to use a computer without telling the computer who you are?  And why should you have to confirm your identity at the door of the building and then again when you sit down at a computer?  After all if security let them in the building they’re entitled to use other public services of the building.  Just as they have access to the public restrooms, shouldn’t they have access to the public computers?  Now they do.  And more relevant to most users, what if their password expired, they don’t have time to deal with the bureaucracy of having it reset, and they just need to look at an email quickly or email a document from a flash drive?  Now they can.  And there are other benefits to privacy:

Tags: Lab Management, Mac Image, Mac OS X, Privacy, security, Surveillance, Trust, Users Rights

I’m pleased to announce that after months of work our first Mac classroom has opened at the Graduate Center.  We had previously set up dual boot MacBooks for our Audio Visual department and have dual boot MacBooks available for loan from the Help Desk in the library.  Although this classroom has 15 computers facing forward, a configuration that doesn’t seem necessary under any circumstance today, it opens up new possibilities for faculty and students at the school – and that’s a good thing…

The classroom image was built as a team effort.  A Windows technician built the Windows image on a 24″ iMac, I built the Mac image, including Boot Picker for OS selection – and used my new installation of DeployStudio to capture the images, create a workflow and deploy them to the classroom.  The workflow partitions the drive and installs the OS on each side.  We had used a similar workflow previously in NetRestore but DeployStudio is much easier to set up (and much faster all around).

After a bit of tweaking on the Windows side (pesky XP) – the Macs are set up and we can manage them (both sides) from Apple Remote Desktop.  You can visit the new Dual Boot Classroom in C196.02 on the C level of the Mina Rees Library at the Graduate Center.  Classes are regularly scheduled in the room and it can be reserved by contacting IT.

Tags: Dual Boot, Lab Management, Mac OS X, MICRO$OFT

“Apple rejected a free iPhone application that advocated a single-payer health system, calling the application “politically charged,” according to the app’s developer.

Red Daly, a 22 year-old computer science grad student at Stanford, submitted his iSinglePayer iPhone app for Apple’s approval on Aug. 21. A little more than a month later Apple rejected it on the grounds of its content, Daly told Wired.com.”

Read more…

Also, you might not hear about these when they happen because Apple is putting rejections under NDA!

“If you’re a developer and Apple rejects your iPhone application from its App Store, the company wants you to shut up and get over it.

Apple’s serious about it: The company has extended the iPhone non-disclosure agreement, which prohibits application developers from discussing programming tips, to include rejection letters as well. Some developers in the past have shared their rejection letters on the web, but now, according to MacRumors, rejection letters include a clause that reads, ‘THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS MESSAGE IS UNDER NON-DISCLOSURE.’”

From Wired Gadget Lab via MyDD

Boo, Hiss! on Apple for this one!  (Gosh I find myself saying that a lot recently…could Apple and Google be the worst offenders out there now?  I really used to like them!)

Tags: Apple, Democracy, Free Speech, Users Rights