Apple recently announced that they are redesigning and redeploying the mainboard for their latest notebook computer, the MacBook Pro. It’s worth putting this in some context so you can see how sad the situation really is for Apple users here.

Apple’s hardware is a collection of cherry-picked parts. Apple decides what hardware they want to “support” (since their OS is non-free, calling this real support is simply not true) and they determine when this “support” ends (according to Apple Newton users, Apple isn’t interested in sharing information about their hardware, even for machines that aren’t being sold anymore). The MacBook Pro revisions happen without much publicity. This particular mainboard was recently at revision D and is now up to revision F according to a post on digg.com.

So when Apple says If your 15-inch MacBook Pro emits a high-pitched buzzing sound, please contact AppleCare for service, one wonders how things came to be this way.

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For years I’ve hosted Digital Citizen on WEFT 90.1 FM in Champaign, Illinois, first during overnight programming and then during primetime. I’m leaving WEFT and hosting my final episode of Digital Citizen there tonight. Bad managerial decisions have compelled me to leave the station. It’s been my privilege to bring you news about what’s going on with free expression in the digital age. Digital Citizen isn’t going away; I’ll continue covering Free Software movement news and views on this blog.

From 8-10PM (UTC-5:00) tonight, my brother-in-law Nathan Owens will join me in the studio. Together we’ll cover a variety of topics in tech news and take your calls (217-FLY-LIVE or 217-359-5483).

Later this evening we’ll hear from:

• Cory Doctorow—his keynote speech at the Redhat summit recently relicensed under a Creative Commons license that allows non-commercial redistribution.
• Richard Stallman—will end the show on WEFT with What Should it Mean to Promote Free Software?; a talk I found interesting because it is both concise and informative.

In the past Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales has been quite vocal about using exclusively free and open codecs for Wikipedia. One would think that this extends to media storage and broadcast as well: The previous Wikimania was broadcast online in Ogg Theora+Vorbis (a free and open video and audio codec playable on all platforms through a variety of players including VideoLAN Client, Totem, Helix Player, mplayer, and Xine). The recordings were archived in this format as well. One could play these files without bumping into patent encumberances or using proprietary software.

Not so today; apparently, Wikimania ’06 will be broadcast exclusively in RealMedia. RealMedia is a proprietary format one must use proprietary software to play. This encourages users to give up their software freedom—the freedom to run, share, and modify their software for any purpose at any time. Regardless of which front-end one uses (mplayer, “Real Alternative”, etc.) one cannot escape installing and running proprietary software to see this conference.

Wikimania purports to be about “provid[ing] an opportunity for Wikimedians and the general public alike to meet and share ideas about free and open source software”.

For Wikimania, sharing ideas about FLOSS requires using proprietary software. This might not be a big deal for the Open Source movement which isn’t very critical of proprietary software, but for the Free Software movement which eschews non-free software, this is remarkable.

What happened in the intervening year? Is Wikipedia giving up on using exclusively free and open codecs and formats?

Update 2006-09-11: No, Wikimania isn’t entirely giving up on free formats and codecs, they’re just treating freedom as a second-class citizen; an option to consider when a proprietary and/or patent-encumbered file isn’t available first.

Check out the Wikimania 2006 archives now and you’ll see a clear majority of the audio in MP3 format and video in some proprietary codec with a QuickTime wrapper. Ogg Vorbis audio and Ogg Vorbis+Theora audio+video files are few and far between. Jimbo’s essay (above) would give you the idea that Wikipedia would either focus exclusively on free codecs, formats, and files, or possibly offer proprietary and encumbered files as an alternative only where a free version existed.

Chris Brunner claims

Silence is Defeat doesn’t log your activity!

As far as Brunner knows, this is true. But verification is a non-trivial task. If you’re interested in copyright infringement, Silence is Defeat (SiD) looks an awful lot like a new chokepoint—the point the copyright holders can target (either the admins of that system or their ISP) for copyright infringement claims. Why trust them with your illicit activities?

But let’s assume SiD keeps no logs. Do you know who SiD’s ISP is? What reason do you have to trust them?

As for not even your ISP will know what you’re doing, your ISP could have a record of you establishing an SSH connection to SiD’s machines which could be handy if someone is trying to put together a slightly better picture of what went down.

Hiring a third party to assist in copyright infringement isn’t going to make the infringement invisible. Using SSH isn’t going to hide as much about your activities as you’d like.

I accept and appreciate that SiD wants to assist others in free expression and introducing others to the open source movement (even though I’d prefer pointing people to the ethically-minded free software movement instead of a movement that focuses on technological efficiency aimed at a business audience). However, I’m not convinced that enough of the people involved whom SiD depends on to work are trustworthy.

Perhaps it’s just a matter of time until someone tries doing something illegal with their SiD account at work. Their work machine is probably running some proprietary OS on which (unbeknownst to them) a keylogger is also running, silently recording mouse movement and keyboard activity. Suddenly even more information comes to light, and from a wholly unexpected place—the former employer.