Poll: Should we post notices of content thieves?

Ever since Nanci (and I) started this blog we’ve found sites that like our content enough to post some of it it on their blogs, but without mentioning the source other than a link back to us so people can read the entire post. Some aren’t even that kind, posting every bit of our content on their site, with a mere link back to our original post.

As you can see from the link on the left hand side of every page on this blog, with the exception of content specifically noted as having different permissions the content we create is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. I know that sound like a mouthful of legalese, but in short it means that you’re free to copy, share and remix (adept) our work with the following conditions:

1. You have to identify where you saw the content and, since both Nanci and I write here, identify the author of the post
2. Not use our content in  an attempt to make money for yourself (watch where those ads on your site go around our content)
3. Make sure your use of our content is covered by a similar license

We keep finding sites that use our content without specifically identifying where they saw the content, and whenever we find such a case either Nanci or I will attempt to contact the person who re-posted our content and ask for attribution, either with a comment on their post or in an email to the site owner where we can find an email address. Every now and then we find a site that has no problem posting our content wrapped with an ad, and while we don’t begrudge anyone making money we really would prefer that they kept adverts out of the post itself. In other words no ads between the title (which is usually word for word of our post title) and the body, especially when they duplicate our content.

I bring this up because just a few days ago I wrote a post about a new way to read the Boston Globe. In fact it was the very last post before this one. Within a day Nanci was notified of a trackback link of someone who chose to reproduce the top of my post, which I don’t have a problem with, but without any identification of the original author (moi) or the site where they found it other than a link back to my post. They also have rather large ad right between the (our) title and our content. As soon as I was aware of the linkback I wrote a comment on their post asking for attribution, pointing out the CC license on our content. My comment was held for moderation, which was fine, but now a day and a half later I see that not only is my comment not published but there is no change made to their post.

My question for you: Are we making a big deal out of this, or are we right to consider it a violation of our license? And if we’re right, would we be wrong to start posting a notice of the offenders? Nanci and I would have to work out a good way to point out the offenders if we decide to go that route, but we wanted to hear from our readers to see how you all feel about it. Just cast your vote below and we’ll let you know the results in a week or so.

Readers on Ubuntu Weblogs, please forgive me if you feel this post shouldn’t be on that planet, but I wanted to make sure this poll was seen by as many of our readers as possible.

Updated 29 July: Thanks to the great question by Jon Pawley Nanci and I changed our CC license from the United States specific one to the “unported” license. As I was looking into that I discovered a nice post on the WP.com support site on the matter. As a result I added some specifics to the license decleration widget to specify both what we consider “attribution” as well as “non-commercial”. Thanks for the feedback, guys (and gals)! Please keep those comments coming on any post you read here. We love hearing from our readers.

There’s a new way to read the Boston Globe

I was enjoying a nice iced coffee at Starbucks this morning as I perused this morning’s Boston Globe when I noticed an advert for a new way to read the local broadsheet. They’ve now partnered with Adobe to create something called the Globe Reader, an electronic edition that gives you access to all of the coverage of the daily print edition that doesn’t require either an Amazon Kindle or a live ‘net connection to enjoy it.

While I had today’s Globe in my bag when I got to my comp I didn’t have the advert handy to get the URI to learn more about it but I figured that’s ok, I’ll just go to the Globe’s home page and use the handy link that must be there. Yeah, right. After about 20 minutes of searching through the site I finally clicked on a subscription link since you need to have a subscription to either the print version or to the new electronic edition to enjoy it, end the URI I remembered was wrong. It turns out I was close, because the URI in the advert was bostonglobe.com/GlobeReader. (I was trying to use something like boston.com/GlobeReader, which works but was gives you a 404 error.)

Once I finally got to the right URI and I was very pleasantly surprised to find that it’s not strictly a Windows or MacOS product, they also have a version for Linux! It does require Adobe AIR, but the download link says that it works on Linux. If you click click on the FAQ’s link on the bottom of the Reader page you can find that the system requirements include Linux (Fedora 8, Ubuntu 7.10, or openSUSE 10.3), but if you wander into the system requirements on Electronix Edition FAQ’s via the Globe subscriber’s FAQ page it only shows Windows and the MacOS. I suspect the Reader is such a new offering that they haven’t gotten all of the info updated yet. It’s unfortunate, especially for a world class publication such as the Globe, but they have had a bit on their mind lately.

On the Reader home page you’ll find a nice little video showing what you can expect from the Globe Reader, and the vid itself looks pretty promising. Of course I’m not a home subscriber to the Globe (due more to my current economic state more than anything else, which is why I’m glad when I can find a copy of the Globe left behind at Starbucks like I did today) but I did click on the install link for the Reader. I’m not sure what I expected, partly because as usual I was in GNOME’s Epiphany browser rather than Firefox, plus I knew I’d have to install Adobe AIR and had no clue what hoops I would have to jump through to do that. But it was amazingly easy. I simply clicked on the install link, and I was asked for confirmation that I wanted to install both the Reader and Adobe AIR. I said yes, and once things were downloaded I was asked where to install the GlobeReader. Amazingly, I didn’t even have to close Epiphany and open it again to be able to start using AIR to install the GlobeReader, because it got installed so quickly and quietly I didn’t even realize I had installed AIR until it was actually working. I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing, since I would have preferred to have to specifically grant permission to install it, just from a security standpoint.

For the install of the GlobeReader I went with the offered location of /opt, knowing that I’d have to give my sudo password to install software there. Rather than getting a permission error I was asked for my password via the normal dialog. Once I provided it I simply waited a short time for the installation to finish before I was asked for my Boston Globe password. If you don’t have a free online account with the Globe’s website you’ll need to create one to use the Reader, but once I logged in I saw the reader, but with a reminder that I need to pay for it one way or another.

Before looking at payment options I went through all the navigation links on the left hand side of the Reader window and saw what looks to be all of the content of the print edition, without all of the ads, but unless I’m missing something it’s also without what I call the Educational Pages (the funnies).  Once I was ready to look at the cost I clicked on the Subscribe Now link, where something pretty unexpected happened. Even though Epiphany was open, and has the title of Default Browser on my system, the GlobeReader opened the Reader’s home page in … Firefox. I have to wonder what would have happened if I had in fact completely blown the Fox from my system once I decided I was sick of it getting to be such bloatware with features once available as addons being moved into the base package. First, of course, you have to do a little more clicking before we can pull out our credit/debit card. First click on the Electronic Edition tab on the top of the subscription page, then click the Buy now button (which will want to open a new window for some odd reason) to get to the page where you can buy your electronic edition of the Globe. The cost is pretty reasonable for a paper that costs each edition $1 Monday-Friday and a whopping $3.50 for the Sunday edition, plus you can buy just the current copy. If you want a prior day’s edition you can buy that, too. There’s even a way to read an issue for free, but either way you go you will need to set up an account with the NewsStand site since it uses a completely different account from your online enjoyment of the Boston Globe. Yeah, they should really find a way to safely let you use a single login, or at least an OpenID to access content from the same provider. As always, make sure you read the Terms of Service before clicking the button to submit your info for a new account if you don’t have one. I didn’t see anything onerous in their ToS, but it’s a good idea to make sure you know a company’s terms before giving them your personal info, even if all you’re giving them is your name and email address. One word of warning: The NewsStand ToS comes up as a PDF file in a new window, and since the file is set to match the width of the window you’re going to want to either resize the window or maximize it so you can read it without giving yourself a headache. Luckily, I got the account creation page when I clicked the link to get a free issue and immediately after I submitted my account info I got a page with a receipt for a free issue. When I clicked the Continue button a new browser window opened with my free copy of today’s Boston Globe so I could read it.

I need to point out two things here. First, I got a PDF of today’s paper, but it wasn’t available in the Globe Reader, but I had the joy of being able to read today’s funnies in the free copy. Plus I was able to get a copy I could save on my hard drive, although I had to install iBrowse Offline, a Java app to be able to do it. Luckily iBrowse Offline’s installer let me choose where, if at all, to install a link for running it, as well as where to save my downloaded issues. The good news is that you can safely decline to have any links saved since the link I had saved looked pretty useless, but if you look in the folder where you had iBrowse Offline installed you’ll see a bash script that you can use to create a launcher. There’s an icon in the .jar file that you can use, but rather than have you find and extract the icon you can get it by saving the image to the left (I’m showing it at double the normal size so you can save it more easily).

The current issue is a mere $.50 so I decided to buy it to give the Reader a proper testing. Once I told newsstand.com about my plastic it said I needed to transfer some money to my e-wallet, and I had to transfer dollars, not half a dollar. I tried to put a dollar in my account, only to be told that the minimum amount is $5. Meh. That wasn’t quite possible at this point in the month, but I’ll give it a shot in a few days and post a follow up on the GlobeReader. At least they didn’t post a test transaction to my account, which is completely understandable (although not the constant repeat test transactions that Starbucks wants to do every time I reload my Starbucks card online for some really dumb reason).

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Before I close this post I want to share a picture I made earlier this week. As you may have heard, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gave North Korea a verbal slapdown on Monday, comparing the country to unruly teenagers over their recent test launches of nuclear-capable missiles. According to the Reuters article,

“What we’ve seen is this constant demand for attention,” Clinton, who is in India, said in an interview that aired on Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“And maybe it’s the mother in me or the experience that I’ve had with small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention — don’t give it to them, they don’t deserve it, they are acting out,” she said.

Ouch. Nut that I am, as soon as I heard that I had an image in my head of Secretary Clinton sending North Korea to their room without supper.  The next day I was able to find a picture on the Pundit Kitchen site to use to make this lol. (Click on it to see it at full size.)

Sure, I’m not the first one to make a lol out of that pic, in fact I’m not even the 10th (I’m not sure where I fall in the count, but there’s 23 lol made of that pic), but if you like it please click on the image and vote for it so it could find it’s way to the main Pundit Kitchen front page. I’d appreciate it. I do have some things I’m meaning to blog, including some info on a great portable media player, and hopefully I’ll get it posted before too much longer.

Mark your calendar: Software Freedom Day 2009 is coming!

[I know Peng usually posts the announcement about this, but I saw the email message and shot off a quick IM message to him about it. He said I should post it since he's not able to guarantee his being able to write a post today, and he did say to use the Ubuntu category to make sure it gets out to the Ubuntu Weblogs. -Nanci, Peng's sister]

I just got a note from the wonderful folks at 4freedom in SecondLife letting me know that Software Freedom Day 2009 is coming up on 19 September.

SFD is a celebration of Free and Open Source Software, but it definitely isn’t about bashing Microsoft, SCO, or any other commercial/proprietary software organizations. Instead it’s a way to look at all the wonderful FOSS options that are available and helping others know about them.

There’s a map on the SFD site to help you find a team in your area. If there’s no team in your area you can start one yourself, or at the very least join 4freedom for the celebration in SecondLife. I’m going to try to make plans to either join the folks in the Boston area (I hear the Mass. Ubuntu LoCo is looking to do something, even if it’s with another group, in the Boston area) or get into SL to join the festivities with 4freedom.

Running GNU/Linux and seeing CrunchBang in your kernel list? We’ve got a fix for it.

[Updated to include a response from corenominal himself with one final fix some may need. -Peng]

I usually don’t look at the Grub kernel list when I boot my Ubuntu box, but last month I noticed that all of the kernels in my list showed “crunchbang” rather than “Ubuntu 9.04″. I did some searching and found a thread on the Ubuntu Forums about the issue and dstew made a great comment that helped me track down the problem.

It turns out it came from Philip Newborough’s PPA , which I have in my Third-party sources list. Philip, aka corenominal, has some great packages in his PPA, some of which Nanci has written about previously. If you have his PPA in your /etc/apt/sources.list you may have gotten update notices for grub or one of the other apps he has packages for. If you accepted his grub package you may have unconsciously had your /boot/grub/menu.list updated.

This is because Philip is one of the driving forces behind CrunchBang Linux, a GNU/Linux distro based on Ubuntu but designed to be faster, not to mention prettier (as their wiki states, “Finally, unlike Ubuntu, CrunchBang Linux isn’t brown ” ) and has several CrunchBang packages in his PPA. While I can’t confirm this with 100% certainty, I suspect the change got made when I accepted grub - 0.97-29ubuntu50-1crunchbang1 as an update.

The solution

There are a few things you can do to get rid of the “CrunchBang” on your boot menu. The first is to roll back grub to the previous, official Ubuntu Jaunty, package. Open Synaptic (System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager), and once it opens do a search for Grub (Edit > Search or Ctrl-F). Once you find grub select it and to go Package > Force Version. You will want to select the highest version that doesn’t include “crunchbang”. On my system the version I want is version 0.97-29ubuntu53 (jaunty), but your system may be different. Now apply the change you made by either clicking the icon on the toolbar (it’s a green check mark, but your theme may be different), using Edit > Apply Marked Changes, or by using the Ctrl-P shortcut. Once the change has been made, go ahead and lock the version on grub by selecting the package and using Edit > Lock Version. That way you won’t be prompted to apply that upgrade again in the future. At this point I strongly recommend that you disable his PPA until you know there’s an update in his packages that you know you need. While it may not be needed, I recommend at least logging out and back in to finalize the changes you just made, although you will need to reboot to actually see if the changes show up in your boot list.

Unfortunately I’m seeing that this process doesn’t actually undo the changes to your /boot/grub/menu.list, the file used to present you with the kernel options at boot time. If you have the application Starup Manager (SUM), you can you can run that to at least verify that the kernel carries the identifier “Ubuntu 9.04″ rather than “CrunchBang”. When I opened /boot/grub/menu.list in the Text Editor (gedit) to see if the change had been made my kernel list still showed “CrunchBang” (which is what prompted this post in the first place), but once I ran SUM it showed that my kernels did carry the “Ubuntu 9.04″ name. Once I closed SUM the menu.list, which I still had open in gedit, had been updated on my hard drive, and sure enough the kernels now showed the identifier “Ubuntu 9.04″. I’m not sure what exactly happened, but I’m glad it did.

If that doesn’t resolve things for you, or if you don’t use SUM, you will need to open /boot/grub/menu.list in a text editor with administrative permissions (backing up the current file first!) by running this in a terminal window:

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.list

Scroll down to where you see ## ## End Default Options ##. Below that is the list of kernels available for booting into. Change the title on each kernel listing to change “CrunchBang” to “Ubuntu 9.04″, or whatever you want the title to read, then save the file and close the window. The next time you boot your computer look at the kernel menu and you should see that the options no longer carry the moniker CrunchBag.

I have emailed Philip about this, and if he gives me information to pass along I’ll add it.

Update 2:30 PM: I got a response from Philip and he didn’t realize putting the packages on his PPAwould cause problems, and he’s pulled them. As far as this particular issue, you definitely want to roll back to the official version of grub, as detailed above. For after that I’ll quote Philip’s email.

Regarding fixing up your grub boot list, if you have already rolled back the package, you should be able to run the following command to remove the CrunchBang references:

sudo update-grub

Apologies again for the boob.

That should take care of any issues you’re still experiencing. If anyone runs into Philip someplace, I’d buy him a pint. He’s definitely earned it for all the good work he’s done for the Linux community, whether you use any package from his PPA or not.

Thanks again, Philip. You rock.