"iPhone SpyPhone?"—The Music Video!

I constructed a somewhat modified version of Pete Warden's iPhoneTracker tool, and used it to produce this video. I've visualized ten months' worth of location data from my iPhone 4's consolidated.db, as it was added to the database in this, and while it could be said to be "tracking me" in a very general way (like at a city level), it's far from "tracking my every move", in either time or space.

(Sigh. The iframe for the embedded YouTube video doesn't appear on Planet GNOME, at least not for me in Chromium. Here is a direct link to the video on YouTube.)

What do you think?

I've got more information on how I produced this on my main blog, including links to

• a pre-built version of the modified iPhoneTracker I used
• the source code changes I made
• a higher-resolution version of the video which you can download (Quicktime format)
• and, as a bonus, a downloadable archive of The Wired CD, Creative Commons-licensed music from artists like David Byrne (whose "My Fair Lady" was used as the soundtrack for this).

Enjoy!

(If you liked this, consider voting it up as a submission on Slashdot, please!)

iPhones and Location-Gathering: NO CALL FOR PANIC.

You've undoubtedly been reading a lot of histrionics about the fact that there's a file on your iPhone (if you have one) which contains a database of time-stamped longitude and latitude coordinates, with attendant speculation that the iPhone is "tracking your every move". It's not.

See my posting on my main blog to get all the details on what it is doing.

What Does a Dead Parrot Have to Do With Software Development?

Read my new article, "What Monty Python Taught Me About the Software Industry", on Software Quality Connection to find out...

What Are Your "Technological Holy Grails"?

Harry McCracken posted an interesting article on his "Four Technological Holy Grails". I came up with some of my own. What are yours?

Removing/Configuring Facebook Apps: Do You Know How?

I know a number of folks in the community are Facebook users—despite the dire warnings of some about "CIA plots" and the like—but with the dramatic increases in "rogue" apps there and "like-jackings" and such, I'm not sure everyone knows how to remove an application you don't want, or to configure one to limit the information it can access (when it's possible to do so).

Facebook seems to want to make this as difficult as possible, by hiding the settings in not-easy-to-locate places, by moving things around, etc. Accordingly, I wrote up a quick guide, with screen shots, over on my other blog, for those who are interested...

Good News for Facebook-Haters!

The growth of like-jacking, spamware and malware links, and the like on Fa(r)cebook continues unabated. Before long it'll be like this:

For more on this, and what to do about it if you've gotten unfortunately caught by something like this—and it's getting harder and harder to tell, in some cases—see here...

This Is Not An Energy Converter

This makes hot, crispy bread. (Image, courtesy of Zalgon.)

Lurking on the Gnome marketing list, and seeing some of the silliness going on, I'm reminded of one of the things which people regularly seem to misapprehend about what they're doing. Maybe they're unclear on their goals.

I'd thought marketing was about "getting new people to at least try out what you're offering", but a lot of what I see still seems to be more about "getting the people already using what you're offering to feel validated about the choice they've made" ("Made of inspiration, made of easy"? Really?)

That, and the rant I witnessed this morning, about how the "i" in everything made by Apple stood for "idiot"—under completely mistaken circumstances, as it happened—encouraged me to write a posting about what Apple is really selling, and why they sell a bunch of it.

Got a "To Do" List? Actually Get Anything Done?

It's not unusual to spend a lot of time putting together a "To Do" list, and then going on to ignore it until it gets stale. Turns out that making a "To Do" list, in an of itself, doesn't actually help you in getting anything done, for several reasons.

I've put together the first of a series of articles on why the problem with getting your "To Do" list cleared may be your "To Do" list. See more here.

Lunatic Stalker Update

The lunatic stalker who's been harassing me for several years is still at it, now impersonating various people on Facebook. He started out impersonating me, but having had that ID removed, he's now—as of this morning—impersonating Richard Stallman. The ID of the profile—which is blocked from me, so I can neither view nor report it—is

I can't view it, but I believe this is "Richard Stallman's" profile:

http://facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001954412755

This is Perplexing

I've gotten some interesting commentary on my last posting with regard to the LVC situation. Much of it has devolved into excruciatingly minute examinations of under exactly which circumstances one should be willing to compromise one's Steadfast Principles and precisely how much, purely in order to get more free software into more people's hands.

The perplexing part is that I don't really recall any thin-end-of-the-wedge hand-wringing over the lost-standing and only recently-resolved Sun RPC situation, where people found no day-to-day problem in a GPL violation which affected pretty much every Linux-based system on the planet for years.

I frankly don't get it. (As of a moment ago, VLC is still up on the iTune App Store...)

Gun. Foot. Bang.

Once again, the Free Software Foundation trots out its most strained and sketchiest reasoning to justify painting Apple as a villain and trying to keep GPL-licensed software out of the App Store and off iOS devices.

This time, it's taking a much bigger risk: in doing so, it's placing the VLC project into the middle of the conflict, and taking sides—apparently—with one developer against many others.

More here.

Better Living Through Stoicism!

My cat went missing yesterday! What does this have to do with ancient Greek philosophy? I've written this blog posting to explain.

RIP LimeWire. Should We Care?

In stark contrast to the inability of some folks to conduct an actual discussion, I've always gotten along well with Tim (aka "Goblin"), who blogs on free software and related matters over on OpenBytes.

He recently posted on the LimeWire shutdown, and the attempt to punish the RIAA for it by conducting a DDoS attack against their site, something we agree is hugely counterproductive behavior.

My response to one of Tim's comments there turned into a blog posting in its own right, on what the issues are here and how the community should be viewing this.

This Week's "Linux on the Desktop" Debate

(image courtesy Sarah Caulfield)

The subject of whether there's any future (or present, for that matter) in the notion of "Linux on the desktop" as something that "regular end-users" might want to take up has been discussed in a variety of places this past week. I put my two cents in over on my other blog (and this is "GNOME-related", so I don't want any whining).

The situation, as I see it, is that, even if Linux isn't "dead on the desktop", if it were, it would scarcely make a ripple on the awareness of most users of personal computers.

The reasons why things got to this point, and why we can expect the same in the mobile space—more Android and webOS and the like on phones and tablets and such, but scarcely any user-visible "community developed-and-maintained" open source—in the foreseeable future are really pretty basic as I see it.

Most of this is not appreciably different to things I've said at "GNOME Mobile" meetings and on the gnome-marketing list. If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you always got.

Why Would Someone Try to Bribe Me to Bury This Story?

I've never had anyone attempt to buy me off before, that's a first. Evidently, I turned over a rock related to some tax fraud scandal on freenode which has been covered up for about five years.

Anyone know any details regarding this? Feel free to contact me privately if you prefer.

No, Apple Is Not Trying to Patent LLVM. That's a Lie.

There's been some nonsense being floated around on identi.ca (as well as less savory locales) the past week, to the effect that "Apple has patented LLVM". It turns out to be based, as near as I can tell, on someone's having done a simple string search through Apple's patents for the string LLVM, finding two instances, assuming the worst, and pouring out their darkest, most ignorant, most ill-informed fears onto the "End Software Patents" site, which Ciaran Riordan runs, without ever actually having read the patents (actually one patent, one application) that had gotten them so upset.

This was more or less the state in which I found the Apple page, a couple of days ago, over there. Ciaran and I have been discussing the matter for the past couple of days, pretty constructively for the most part, while I corrected the page in various ways. It's in a state at this point where we can both tolerate it, at least.

If anyone tries to tell you that "Apple has patented LLVM", it's a load of FUD and nonsense. All the details are over here. I've summarized the five biggest arguments the opponents of this situation—which turns out to involve a single patent application which actually has nothing to do with LLVM per se—have brought forward as to why this particular patent application is so problematical in their view here.

I Can't Tell Whether I'm "Good" or "Evil" Any More.

My filters picked up this story (in multiple instances) today: Microsoft has agreed to license a portfolio of some 70-odd smart phone-related patents held mutually by my ex-employer ACCESS and Acacia.

I actually worked as ACCESS' patent portfolio strategist on this last year, helping to assemble, organize and relate the patents in question (out of possible hundreds), reporting to the then-General Counsel (who's now indulging himself making fine Belgian chocolate, something he tells me he's enjoying a lot more than lawyering).

So, I guess that makes me an official "patent troll". However, I'm a patent troll that got money out of Microsoft. I suppose Boycott Boy and his pals are liable to burn out a few circuits trying to get their (pin)heads around that!

Are You Using the Facebook App on Your Smart Phone?

If so, you really need to take a look at the article I've posted on my other blog. Like now.

Survey Update

So far, I've gotten responses from 35 GNOME members, out of 192 respondents, total.

Of those GNOME members

• 6 (17.6%) are members of the FSF
• 21 (60%) of these respondents say that they routinely use the term "Linux" when referring to "an operating system based on a Linux kernel, etc."; 8 (22.9%) use "GNU/Linux", and 6 (17.1%) use some other term (including the interesting alternative of "Leftux"in one instance—I guess this respondent will be easy to spot should he-or-she be attending GUADEC)
• When limited to the two alternatives, 25 (71.4%) chose "Linux" and 10 (28.6%) chose "GNU/Linux".

When given four potential focuses to prioritize for the Board, GNOME members ranked the alternatives as follows:

Focus	Most Important	More Important	Less Important	Least Important	Average Score
Overseeing the GNOME 3 road map	10 (30.3%)	13 (39.4%)	8 (24.2%)	2 (8.1%)	2.94
Building better bridges to corporate users of GNOME technologies	8 (25.8%)	12 (38.7%)	7 (22.6%)	4 (12.9%)	2.77
Providing technical oversight and direction	7 (24.1%)	7 (24.1%)	10 (34.5%)	5 (17.2%)	2.55
Educating users about the FSF's views on software freedom	6 (17.6%)	3 (8.8%)	7 (20.6%)	18 (52.9%)	1.91

Obviously, the more Foundation members who participate, the more authoritative the survey will be: the current number of respondents represents perhaps 1 in 10 Foundation members. If you haven't participated yet, please take a moment to do so.

Since I'm mainly interested in this issue as it affects the foundation-list and Board activities, I'm not reporting the overall totals at this point, but will do so once I've gotten what seem to be a large enough number of responses to be indicative of something.

Let's please remember that this was raised as an specific issue to prospective Board candidates by Mr. Stallman, a Foundation member, prior to the election. Head-shaking and moans of "Not again!" seem entirely inappropriate, unless our method of dealing with divisive issues is pretending that they simply don't exist....

The "Issue" That Would Not Die: Flog a Dead Horse for Richard

Yes, it's back. On the foundation-list, in spite of a direct request from the moderator that it be dropped. You know it! You love it! It's "GNU"/Linux! (And no, I didn't start it.)

However, this seems like an excellent opportunity to gauge the feelings of the GNOME community around this, and I've accordingly constructed a (in my belief) quite non-leading survey in order to see what people thought.

If anyone feels I'm engaging in "push-polling" here, please let me know, and I'll be happy to make any reasonable changes. I'd like to see this so-called "issue" settled once and for all, if only so that it doesn't get made into a hobbyhorse in future Board elections.