Media trade offs.

Coming to terms with media trade offs

I am all for newer media. Cable television, streaming video, blogging, social networking, digital readers, smart phones, texting and free wireless networking at most fast-food locations have made life far easier in many ways and facilitate communication that would have been difficult in times past. Furthermore, I see the potential for the increasing work in new media providing ground for the increase in undergraduate study of rhetoric in order to facilitate content creation.

Right now, communication as a discipline has not caught up with these advances, and possibly to be the best we can be, we shouldn’t try. Training students in particular technology is setting them up to experience obsolescence as soon as they graduate. Instead, we should probably focus on universal rhetorical principles that seem to make sense regardless of technology, such as those reaching clear back to Aristotle’s On Rhetoric. Nonetheless, what we should do is make sure the students understand the concept of universal principles themselves and that what they learn in one class should be applicable to others.

Perhaps one of the universal principles that we need to make sure they understand is one that was articulated by Marshall McLuhan half a century ago; with every advancement in technology, there is a trade off. The mobile phone and the related drop in the rates of transmission costs due to improved bandwidth is a good example. I remember as a child my mother lamenting that she would like to talk to her mother (my grandmother), but the cost of a telephone call was prohibitive. By the time I got to college, 10₵ per minute was the going rate of a domestic call. I developed a habit of talking to my parents who lived four hours away at least weekly. However, at 10₵ a minute, it was still quite outside a college student’s budget to call often. So, I would call my parents, let it ring three times and they’d call me back. I was well aware of how wonderful it was the phone calls were so cheap! That cost has plummeted. Now, most of my students call their mothers between classes. It is a stereotype that students come out of an exam crying on their phones that “the professor is so mean” and that “there were questions on the test we never discussed in class” (in my class, that is always true because I expect students to do the reading as well as attend class).

All of this is truly wonderful. It really, really is. Because of changes in media, my students have a connection to family that is deep and lasting and that I can’t really understand. My parents knew that when we separated, we were separating. We knew that the relationship was changing. When I speak to my parents, whether it is by telephone (which does not happen every day) or when I get to make a rare appearance in person, it is a call for celebration, a reunion, a joy for all parties. For people today, family reunions will be something of a redundancy, even though they live further apart than ever. My students’ parents never really separate from their children. This attachment to family that began in the millennial generation and that continues today is something that those of us from generation X and older look on with a bit of wonder, sometimes envy and sometimes revulsion.

Why both envy and revulsion? Because there is a trade off. The one that concerns my colleagues and me the most is the lack of independence on the part of our students. Every problem, every difficulty, every heart-break and let down results in a call to Mom (always Mom, never Dad ((perhaps a subject of another blog because that is certainly something with which we need to come to terms))). Even as a grade schooler, my relationship with my parents was not as close as the average college student’s relationship with her or his parents. While I envy that closeness, I am revolted by the fact that these seeming adults cannot “cut the cord,” as the metaphor goes, and live a life that is independent from their parents.

A similar set of revulsion and wonder can be paid to the way that news, especially political news, is disseminated. As a child, my parents followed pretty traditional gender roles with the exception that my father did most of the grocery shopping. Sometimes, he would return from the grocery store with a paper bag filled with groceries and a copy of Newsweek, a news magazine that no longer even exists today. In those days, grocery stores sold news magazines, which is something that they absolutely do not do now. When we had a television, which we only had off and on growing up, my Dad would try to watch the evening news most days. My Dad is a fairly conservative guy (a picture of “compassionate conservatism”), and would often complain of the liberal bias in his news magazine and his news television programs, but continued to consume the media. No doubt something similar happened in liberal households throughout the United States at that time. A conservative bias per se in media was probably not a complaint but a “pro-establishment,” “pro-management” or “anti-labor” sentiment probably irked the more liberal consumers who continued to consume the news available.

   

There were quite a few intentionally right-wing or left-wing weekly publications that were being produced as well. I know that I saw Christianity Today and several hunting and fishing magazines that espoused an openly conservative bias in my home as a kid. My guess is that the average liberal household did not have many of these passing through their mailboxes. My father was never a subscriber to widely focused conservative magazines such as National Review, but that was probably because it is kind of expensive.

Growing up in a conservative household has led me to become kind of a conservative guy myself, though more Libertarian than Republican. My grandmother subscribed me to Time (the last remaining general news weekly), so I read that with the same eye rolling with which my father read Newsweek. I am a subscriber to National Review. Real Simple, Reader’s Digest and People also come to my mailbox due to my wife’s interests and I find myself reading them far more often than I am comfortable admitting.  Print media in various forms takes up a significant portion of my home and positively fills my office.

There is another way I consume news too. I consume news on the internet. I used to consume news via various cable channels as well, and if we can ever adjust our finances, I’d like to again. Still, there is a huge difference that works itself into differences in these new media than what was happening in print.

I would take my subscription to National Review as a prime example. Because it has an openly political bias, one can easily compare it to new media with similar bias. The latest edition of the National Review magazine deals with the national issue of gun control. It deals with it in a careful, reasoned and thoughtful way. It is a conservative publication, so the careful, reasoned and thoughtful arguments lead to the conclusion that gun control should be focused on limiting government control, rather than restricting individual rights (see, I’m biased too). To read the articles in the print magazine, I had to turn to a dictionary at least twice that I remember. I was also quite thankful for some training in political philosophy so that I could understand the nuances of the arguments they were making. The articles were written in a polished, unhurried manner making extensive use of intellectual vocabulary, historical precedent and critical syllogistic reasoning. While a liberal would undoubtedly disagree with most of the axioms and some of the reasoning, no liberal would read the print copy of the National Review and come to the conclusion that conservatives were crazy. There is a bias, but that bias is explained, not assumed.

Compare this to newer media with similar bias. Watching Fox News editorials, or engaging with the major political blogs like Breitbart, or even looking at National Review’s website, rather than their print publication, provides interesting points of analysis. The language is simple and terse, even rude to those who might disagree. The philosophical analysis is non-existent. The sites are designed to cause cursory clicking from one page to the next. The editorials are reduced to the literal shouting of talking points. They are dismissive of those who would disagree and use constant hyperbole (intentional overstatement), mockery (making fun), flooding (making vast lists of charges with varying degrees of veracity as though they were all equal) and ad hominem (name calling). This is exacerbated by blogging and private video creation as well. This rude, extremist meanness is often funny, but does now really add to the conversation. This video, for instance, is funny, but does not add to any kind of intelligent debate.

Of course, some liberals see this as a purely conservative problem. I engage with more than enough left-wing media to know that knew media on the left is equally guilty of these charges. In fact, several of my left-leaning friends proudly shared this video of Rachel Maddow engaged in all four of the rhetorical fallacies outlined above.

Still, I don’t see the new news system as “bad” exactly. There are real advantages. There are advantages to the ease with which one can find like minded media. Certainly, this adds to confirmation bias, and tribalism, but a Democrat in Alabama or a Republican in Vermont can realize that they are not all alone in the world. Realizing that one is not all alone is a good thing, really. The speed at which new information can spread is wonderful. When Governor Romney made his infamous “47%” remark this last election season, he had to defend it right away. New media made this something that was not just rumor or innuendo. The recording was right there. As much as I did not favor the President in this election (but didn’t vote for either major party), I still believe that this was as it should be. Controversial statements should be discussed, not denied. The slow media of network news at five o’clock and weekly magazine coverage could not have made the discussion happen. It did happen, however, and at least partially because it happened, America, in the majority, chose Obama.

I like that I can write this blog. I know that very few people will actually read it, and it functions more, as my subtitle implies, as a means for me to “come to terms” with various and sundry topics. I like that it is something more public than a journal. I like that anyone can blog and some can become very successful at it. I like that freedom, that liberty, which lower cost publication has afforded to all of us. Unfortunately, the drive to click and garner quick agreement does have its draw backs. Some people who come across this blog may not bookmark it because I use big words or have political opinions different from theirs.  There is a trade off in the movement to new media.

And that is the real point of this posting. Changing media involves trade offs. It is not a new or original idea, but it is one with which I am coming to terms right now.

Arkham City, Silver City

Coming to terms with where I live.

I recently finished the videogame Batman: Arkham City. 

It was a fun game and an intelligent sequel to Batman: Arkham Assylum which one reviewer described:

“Hyperbole can be venomous to a review's credibility. Any insightful merit which a video game critique may possess seemingly goes out the window as soon as the reviewer starts dropping bombs like ‘best game ever’ or ‘literally mindblowing’ or ‘it will birth you anew in its magnificence.’ Perhaps it is because we've all heard these phrases -- save for that last one -- so many times that they've lost their currency with us.
“Rest assured, I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that Batman: Arkham Asylum is unquestionably the best licensed game I've ever played. At the end of the day, however, that's a fairly low hurdle to clear -- it better reflects the game's quality to say it's one of the best stealth-action games ever made, and easily the best video game 2009 has had to offer thus far.”

I (and a large number of critical award presenters) agree with this review and share the reviewer’s temptation to engage in hyperbolic praise for a really great game. I will refrain and merely say that Arkham City is a sequel that more than does its predecessor justice. Not only does it continue with similar game mechanics, a larger map and a bit more of a sandbox style (which I prefer). It also poses, at its root, something of a philosophical question and one which interests me personally and politically; we recognize that “as a society” certain behaviors cannot be tolerated. Now, what those behaviors are and in what way they should be sanctioned are ever and always in contention, but that there are such behaviors is widely agreed. To that end we have tightly controlled panoptical prisons (Bentham, Foucault), invasive and unwanted psychological interventions and tax subsidized attempts to force acceptable behaviors from those who have little or no desire to conform to our strict social standards. Yet we know that

He that complies against his will
Is of his own opinion still
Which he may adhere to, yet disown,
For reasons to himself best known
(Butler, Hudibras, Part III, Canto iii, lines 547-550)

But what if we found another option? What if we simply gave those who could not live by society’s standards a place where they could, within the bounds of that place, create their own society with their own standards and follow their own rules?

Arkham City plays with this question. Video games are great for playing with questions. My former classmate, Georgina Gabor, has written that “play,” in the postmodern era is one of the most effective means of engaging with philosophical concepts. I would extend her argument with reference to video games and say that in the 21st century, that video games are the primary literary device through which serious thinkers can engage in ideas. The “play” which began in silly Atari and Nintendo button mashing has moved with improved media into spectacle, from there to literature and finally to philosophy. While we “play” the games we also play with ideas and thereby engage philosophically with a number of different perspectives in philosophical positions on subjects that matter to us.

Without giving any spoilers (I’m a story-based player and prefer to read critiques without spoilers) I will merely say that the question is considered through the eyes of Bruce Wayne/Batman, Ra’s Al Ghul, Professor Hugo Strange and to a lesser extent through a number of well known Batman villains and allies. It is fascinating to see the “society” that develops in the game and the views on whether this approach is right, what is better, what constitutes society and how we develop social systems of behavior and morality. In ultimate postmodern fashion, the game is played through but in many ways the philosophical issues are left unresolved and the questions regarding the way that we socially deal with our deviants is thoroughly explored and unanswered.

Playing, in a video game world, is a relatively “safe” way of working through philosophical issues. Much like books, movies and television, the videogame creates an alienation from the philosophy it confronts where the concrete actions and consequences of living reality involve real pain. McLuhan wrote about media as being anesthetic and Burke talked about how even the act of speaking separates people from reality. So, while playing the game was a fun way to cycle through the issues regarding social deviants, living it is not so easy.

And that’s where I am.

I’m going to begin my third year teaching in the borderlands of southern New Mexico in a few weeks. As a libertarian with tendencies toward anarchism, I found the inclination against intrusion refreshing. I strongly feel that the less society attempts to limit the individual actions of free people, the more functional the society becomes. Relationships should be voluntary and mutually advantageous. Economies should likewise be uninhibited by external structures. Faith should be more a relationship with God and less a religion of “practices” and “dogma.” Those seem to be “common sense” truths around here, which is nice.

Still, I have to admit that I didn’t come here “by choice.” I was very happy teaching at a small, private, liberal arts college in the Midwest. There were lots of rules at that school, both official and unofficial. There were so many, in fact, that one was inevitably violating some rule or norm all the time. The community was small, poor and dirty, but God help you if the police found your lawn above three inches. Church was formal and separate from daily life. My shotgun had to be registered with the sheriff. There were rules, norms and codes by which people lived their lives and demanded others do the same. I have never really learned why that school neglected to keep me on, refused to renew my contract, but ultimately, in some way, I must have violated some rule spoken or unspoken and they chose to excommunicate me from their order. That exorcation created a ripple effect which largely excluded me from gainful employment in much of the country. I was a risky bet. If I violated the rules one place (though no one knew which ones), I might violate them elsewhere.

So, finally, I came here. I was hired to teach, write and think here. I do my best to like it here, to grow where I am planted, but to a large extent, I see Silver City as my own Arkham City. It is historically, the home of Billy the Kid. It is the place where Geronimo hid and took pot-shots at the US Army. It is where Kit Carson first saw combat. There have always been minerals here, silver, gold and now copper, but people didn’t really come here for the mines. There are minerals all over the place. They were driven here.

In pre-Columbian times, the Mogollon were driven here by tribes invading from the north. Then tribes from northern Mexico were driven north by the Mayans. Then the Apache, who rarely played well with others, were driven here by nearly every Native tribe and left to die. The Spanish who came here were the ones who could not handle the relative civilization of the more southern colonies. The Mormons came to where their polygamy would go unregulated. The other Anglos who came later were largely the social discontents who were forgiven their social trespasses in return for exile. Even today, the hippy, the biker, the “artist,” the survivalist, the homosexual, the pothead, the elderly who can’t afford Arizona or Florida and the general weirdo steadily grow the population in an economy that does not call for further influx of people. I was recently asked by someone why, with the mines faltering, people stay here. They stay here for the reason they came here, for the reason I came here, because this place, this town, would take them when they had nowhere else to go.

Oh, and it’s beautiful (that much is different from Arkham City, which is sublime, but not pretty). The mountains, the weather, the wilderness and the desert show me every day that God loves to play as much as any postmodern. Even going into my third year, I sometimes realized I have forgotten to breathe as I take in the beauty of it all.

So, that all sounds pretty good, right? We’re free to be you and me here and the weather’s great. Ninety percent of the time, it is great. Then there are the real problems. There is the crime; a chiropractor shot in his office recently, another murder in a nearby community, rampant graffiti, burglary, and petty theft all tend get to a guy after a while. There is also the poverty. One way to refuse to conform to society is to refuse to get a flippin’ job. The poverty is further exacerbated by rampant drug use and alcohol abuse. This kind of poverty is contagious and entangling.

And I leave this blog the same way that Arkham City ended. The concept considered. The question examined, but ultimately, unanswered.

The Classical Rhetoric of Video Games

Coming to terms with video games.


I think it is time to get a new video game for my PS3. I've played through the story-line of all of them that I have. So, I need a new one. I'm very open to suggestions, but I don't want to get a game I won't like or that I won't have time to play.


I like games that have a strong aesthetic component. That needs to have two parts to it. I'll call them delivery and style, because I am a classical rhetorician. First of all, delivery, the game needs to be visually appealing. I played the 8-bit games as a kid, and was never too impressed with video games. Then one day when I came home from graduate school and my brothers were playing Final Fantasy X. It was beautiful.  Watching the main character traverse through beautiful forests and sparkling waterfalls amazed me. I went home and blew student loan money and a PS2 that I am still paying for to this day. It wasn't the game itself, it was the beauty, the images, that almost haunted me. The delivery doesn't have to focus on the beautiful. As we know from Longinus, the sublime can be quite terrifying. I liked the more gritty and bloody imagery of Dragon Age II or Arkham Asylum every bit as much as I liked the sparkling waterfalls of Final Fantasy. Remember, this is a VIDEO game, and I need to be amazed by images.


Style is also important. Whether the game is an epic, a tragedy, a comedy a didactic, a jeremiad (that would be something I've never played), an elegy, a satire or whatever, the game needs to tell a fitting story. This is why I do not like "sports" games or "fighting" games as a general rule: "2-3-4 what are we fighting for?" I need to be invested in a reason to do what they are doing. Fighting without reason lacks catharsis and just seems mean. We need a good story. The story should not get too complicated, however. While I loved the graphics of Dragon Age II, the plot line got way too complicated for the way I play. I do not have time to play video games every day. When I do, it might be for an hour or so, and only get a good three hours in one weekend a month. I need to remember what I am doing and why. That is part of the reason I prefer nonlinear gameplay of the classic Role playing games, like most of the Final Fantasy series. Sometimes I have time to complete a quest. Other times, I need to be able to help my character just by gaining some experience points.


I also  need to have what the classical rhetoricians called good "invention," logic, emotion and character. We need coherence. No, it does not have to be fully rational. Magic and superhuman abilities are an important part of why we play. However, if you can fly one minute, you should not be falling the next unless some reason was given as to why you lost that power. If you can knock down one wall, you should be able to knock down similar walls. I need to be emotionally tied to the characters. While an aura of mystery for one or two members of the party are great, I am not going to care that much in the violent world of video games if someone I don't know dies. Finally, the character is essential. There are a number of reasons why video games based on movies are often so bad. The writers assume the characters of the movies and do nothing through game play to flesh them out. Sorry, not interested.


I also need to feel the arc of the story-line, what the ancient rhetoricians called "arrangement." The best arrangement I've found for video games are those that follow the traditional: equilibrium→problem→disequilibrium→epiphany→climax→conclusion model of the contemporary novel. That is not the only choice, and it can be great for us to think we're going to get resolution a few times and be wrong. On the other hand, constantly finding that the princess is in another castle eventually gets tiresome. Give me a beginning which foreshadows the middle which foreshadows the end, please. 


Those of you who are rhetorical scholars know I still have to talk about the final canon, memory. I don't want to have to take notes during a video game. I do, however, want the pleasure of seeing things come together. I love it when things suddenly make sense based on what I remember from earlier in the game. That is awesome.

So, that's what I'm looking for in my next video game. Any suggestions? 

The Future

Coming to terms with the future:

The Future of the Past

I don’t remember my 2^nd grade teacher, Mr. Conklin, all that well. I remember he had a giant “pencil” made out of a fencepost at the front of the class. I remember that he had a monkey puppet named “Monte Math” that I assume that he used to teach us math, although I don’t remember that actually happening. I remember him saying that by the year 2000, we’d be living on the moon. The future was this amazing place full of adventure and excitement, new discoveries, robot maids, world peace and maybe even aliens. I day-dreamed about the future all the time.

In some ways, I think some of us have felt like “the future” has let us down. This sadness became salient as we watched the Space Shuttle Discovery being flown on the back of a jet to its “final resting place” in a museum.

[Picture Courtesy of NASA]

Not only are we not living on the moon, we aren’t even going to send up shuttles anymore. While some say that we are giving up the shuttle program because we are going to “the next era” of extraterrestrial travel, there are so many questions. Will we really? How long will it take? Who will pay for it? Without the impetus to conquer space before the communists, what will its driving purpose be? There are too many questions about the future, too many doubts, too many fears. When a Presidential candidate talks about his goals of a moon-base, he is mocked in the media.

The hopelessness of the future pervades our mass media. While television science fiction once primarily showed the Earth as a future utopia, where we would have to seek out adventure among the stars, current popular culture shows a future dystopia, dirty, polluted, controlled by vice and corruption, where getting through daily life is a violent and dangerous adventure in and of itself. My students don’t hope for a good position on a moon-base. They are preparing (only half-jokingly) for a zombie apocalypse.

Expect the best, prepare for the worst.

One of my favorite student speeches this semester was from a young woman for whom the above mentioned zombie apocalypse was the subject of her deliberative speech. Her argument was reminiscent of Blaise Pascal’s theological wager that if Christianity is false, he’s at least lived a better life for believing it was true. This woman’s argument was that if one prepares for a zombie apocalypse, and there is no zombie apocalypse, one has still made one’s home secure, has extra food and water on hand and has learned some survival skills. None of these will ever prove to be a disadvantage and might prove advantageous in any number of situations other than a zombie apocalypse. The speech was fun, well researched, creative and well delivered. It also was a pretty solid argument. The old saw that we should expect the best and prepare for the worst is good advice for preparing ourselves for the future.

There are people with whom I’ve attended church who have told me “I don’t contribute to a retirement fund because the Lord’s coming back before I’ll be old enough to retire.” Well, if they’re right that’ll be great. What if they’re wrong? Every generation of Christians has believed that they lived in the end times. One of them will eventually be right.

President Obama is suffering some bad press right now because of his deep seeded belief that solar energy is the energy of the future. He’s sunk billions of tax payer dollars into solar energy companies which, even with that money, have come crashing down, unable to create a viable product. Now, Obama may turn out to be right yet. I don’t know what the “energy of the future” is. Still, it might be wise to look at more options. Perhaps he should have been prepared for the idea that this whole thing might not work out.

It is good to be optimistic, as I’ll discuss later, but maybe you should prepare for retirement in case Jesus doesn’t come back right away. Maybe you should invest in things that are already proven. Maybe you should have some extra canned food in your pantry. Maybe you should have a fire extinguisher, a smoke detector and some insurance even though you probably won’t have a house fire. Maybe you should quit smoking because perhaps they won’t have it all cured by the time it catches up to you. Bad things happen. They really do. Bad things will continue to happen in the future and a utopian society will not exist so long as it is made up of fallen people.

But good things happen too, and while I am sometimes disappointed to not be on the moon, I am amazed by what does exist. The modern mobile phone, really a mobile computing device, is a great example. Teachers once told me that I might live on the moon, but they also told me that I wouldn’t always have a calculator with me. Bull. For $49 a month, after taxes, not only do I have my communication hub always with me, I have a calculator, a calendar, a dictionary, a phone-book, an encyclopedia, a notebook, a stopwatch, a camera and even a music player which is always with me. I don’t have a robot maid, but by constantly jingling me with little reminders throughout the day, my phone is really is often a robot secretary. All this, and my phone is not even a very good one! It’s one of the cheapest, no contract phones from Wal-mart.

We often hear about how college students today spend fewer hours studying than they did ten years ago, but teachers are requiring hundreds more pages of output from students than they once did. A ten page term paper was once the standard maximum output from a college sophomore, and that would only be in the few classes which actually required any writing. Writing across the curriculum initiatives at colleges all over the country have made the term paper a standard in almost every class and 10 pages would be a short one, probably only existing in classes where the professor already required two five page papers earlier in the semester. The reason that we are able to require more output and they do less work is the same reason that you are required to create more output in less time at your job than you once did. It is because so much of what was once time consuming is now automated. Students don’t even need to set foot in a library to do real, solid, research anymore.

I could go on and on. The e-reader which will look up words you don’t know as you read and pronounce the ones you don’t know how to pronounce is amazing. The little GPS that my wife and I take on trips has been awesome. Streaming Netflix has changed our lives. Many of my students, even those who live right on campus, still take my classes online because asynchronous learning is a better pedagogy for them.  And just think about this blog; anybody can have one.

Wow! Maybe the future isn’t bad after all. Still, maybe we should get ready just in case it is.

The Future of the Future.

I think we have a real social need for futurists right now. I think we need to have people who can narrate a vision for the future that gives us a reason to dream. I think that dreams beget goals which beget objectives which beget tangible betterment for all of us. We need to be thinking about moon-bases and clean energy. We need to be imagining scientific breakthroughs and philosophical developments. We need these because while we need to plan for the worst, we also need to hope for the best.

In the past there were futures predicted that were wrong. We don’t have regular extraterrestrial vacations for the average consumer. There were also predictions that are right. The other day I was having lunch with one of our administrators and talking about this need. The administrator asked me what I think was supposed to be a rhetorical question: “Who could have imagined the internet or the smart-phone 30 years ago?” I answered: “Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong.” Then I had the wonderful opportunity to teach my colleague about the amazing work of some great communication researchers. These men’s work looked at the way that the world was changing and saw the potential for that change. After seeing the potential, they articulated that potential. It was really from the articulation of the potential that others were able to make it happen.

I think we need to continue that kind of work right now. Researchers need to be willing to speculate realistically and positively about the potential for change which is good. I am working on several papers right now, and among the work I am doing is some that I hope moves in this direction. I see great potential in what we are now seeing in the kindle and nook that I know is going to change the way we communicate.

I also think we need good science fiction again. Science fiction has always held in it the warning of the dangers of technological advancement, but it also needs to hold the hope of overcoming those dangers. Science fiction should not just tell us that the zombies are coming because the virus escaped from the lab. It should also show us how we can use that same ingenuity and technology to defeat the zombies. It shouldn’t just plan for the worst, it should also hope for the best.

Multiple User Shutdown in Ubuntu

Coming to terms with shutting down the computer

Most of the time, my wife is the last person on the computer at the end of the day. Often, as we get ready for bed, I remind her to shut the computer down. If I am also logged on to the computer, it means she'll have to click a couple extra buttons to shut it down. She doesn't like that. So, I made some changes that make this unnecessary, and created this tutorial in case anyone else needs to do it too.

I have to admit that for the average Ubuntu user, following the advice of this tutorial I made is a bad idea. It might lead to unsaved work being lost.

One of the things I love about Linux, however, is that you can make changes to yours software, even if it is kind of dumb.

Open Source Video Editing

Coming to terms with, open source, video editing, creative commons

I love open source tools. Even if you never read my blog at the previous site, any of my new readers since the move (thank you!) should have ascertained this by now. I have a tendency to wax almost hagiographic in my love of both the philosophy behind open source and the tools that we are given from the open source community. We've probably all heard about how Apple users have a religious experience with Apple imagery. I probably experience something similar when I see Tux or a picture of a Gnu.

Part of that is a somewhat selective view of the world. We all do this. When something doesn't correspond to our preconceived notions, we tend to explain it away, rather than explaining aways our notions. In communication studies, we call this "selective distortion." It allows us to live in a world that is constantly not measuring up to expectations. Without this technique, we tend to fall into despair.

I experienced this phenomena in one area, and that has been video editing. Don't get me wrong. There are some truly awesome open source video editors out there. Cinnerella is a powerful tool for professional movie makers. For the novice, however, it is about as user friendly as a wild walrus. Avidemux is better, because they have a massive online user manual, and in only a few years of research, it is understandable and usable. What if I don't want to go out and get an internship in movie production, but I want to make cute little videos for the web?

There are actually quite a few open source video editors that are available for the casual user. The Ubuntu system ships with PiTiVi. I've used it and it is stable and always works. Unfortunately, all it can do is string clips together. There is no panning, no effects, no transitions, nothing. In other words, it works, but not to do anything interesting. Kino has all of these features, but it constantly crashes and interferes with every other operation one is doing. It is hard to figure out where your stuff is in the story-board. I made a couple videos with Kino, but I tried to make many more. They crash.

So, what is an open source user to do? I am embarrassed to admit this, but since my job almost always gives me access to a Windows computer, I use Movie Maker most of the time. Other times, I will go to one of the mac labs we have at work and use iMovie. I honestly feel, in admitting this, like I felt when I told my pastor I sometimes go to the Episcopal church on Ash Wednesday because I like to get the ashes and our tradition doesn't do that. Luckily, I have found an answer.

I created the following video using an open source tool I recently found: Openshot Video Editor. It is a great tool for the casual user. It is every bit as good as Movie Maker, for Windows. No, it is not i-movie, and when I really need to do something a bit better, a video presentation for colleagues, for instance, off I will go to find a Mac.

As you have seen this is just a bunch of still pictures. The main point was to show the effects and transitions available. This is a pretty good tool.

Can Sony Learn a Lesson about Apologia?

Coming to terms with Apologia, PS3, Linux, Geohot, and hacking.

Apologia

As everyone who uses the Playstation Network has surmised by now, Sony owes us an explanation. Their network as been down for several weeks now, and we have been unable to use the online features of our games. We've heard that this is the result of hackers, and that our financial information has probably been compromised. We've gotten emails from Sony, and they have expressed regret. There was a letter from the Senior director of Corporate Communication even offering identity theft protection. Still, what we are really lacking here is not sorrow. We are lacking a real explanation as to why this happened. In the absence of hearing a coherent explanation from Sony, I will offer one here. Unfortunately for them, my explanation may not be one they like.

In rhetorical studies we refer to such explanations by the Greek word "apologia" which is the root from which we get our English word "apology." Understanding the English word might be a good place to start. There are two major meanings for "apology" in English. The first, and most common, is to take responsibility and admit wrongdoing. The second meaning is really only used in theological circles, and it means offering explanation for things that, on their face, seem incredible. The term "apologia" really encompasses both these meanings simultaneously and a bit more.

The term also implies a defense, but not a denial of one's actions. Rather, apologetic rhetoric seeks to ascribe motivation for those actions to circumstance ("A Pentadic Analysis of Senator Edward Kennedy's Address to the People of Massachusetts, July 25, 1969." Central States Speech Journal 21 (1970): 81–86). For instance, if a person breaks into my house and I shoot him, I will not argue that I shot him. That will have been established. Rather I will argue that circumstances were such that I had to shoot the person [note to readers, don't break into my house].

I hate to say it, but Sony's behavior in this entire fiasco has been indefensible. So, if I offer an apologia here, it is not for Sony. Instead I offer an explanation for the hackers who have brought the network down and compromised my bank account.

How I came to love the PS3

When I decided to buy a seventh generation console, I was torn. The XBox 360 seemed to have the most to offer in the way of new games, and that is really why we buy consoles. However, Sony's offering, the PS3 had three things that really sold it for me. The first was the ability to play Blu-ray disks. I'd compared the usability and features of both Blu-ray and the HD-DVD disks that were its competition at the time. I saw Blu-ray as the future, and didn't want to have to buy two devices if one would work.

The second reason was that, at the time, the PS3 could run all of my games from my PS2 and the old Playstation games. That meant I had a whole library of games without forking over more money immediately. That was an awesome selling point

The third big selling point for me was that the PS3 could run a second operating system along side its own, a Linux operating system. Now, I love Linux and the possibility of running it on my console thrilled me. My computer at home runs Linux exclusively, I have a small Linux partition on my work computer for things I just can't do in Windows. I even carry a small Linux OS on a thumb drive in case I need to use someone else's computer. Linux is great operating system made for hackers by hackers. It is totally open and can be altered, so if a hacker needs it to do something it doesn't, they can just write a program to do it. Even better, they can share that hack back with the community and we can all improve our systems.

For me, this was the biggest selling point on the system. Not only was I getting a game console and a Blu-ray player, I was getting a second computer. I would be able to surf the web, write and play silly games while my wife was using the computer!

I bought my console used off of Ebay, and began to play. I fell in love with the device. It did everything I wanted and so much more. It wasn't long before I found the Playstation Network was free and offered all kinds of fun things. There were people I knew who were buying Wii's, and I would have fun at their houses, but was able to play comparable moving games using the PS3's sixaxis controller. I became very evangelical for the PS3.

The relationship faltered

Then I started to hear weird things in the tech news. The newest PS3's being made were no longer backward compatible. Weird, I thought, why would they do that? I could no longer be wildly evangelistic about the PS3. Mine is still backward compatible, but I can't use that to talk my friends into buying a new one. Luckily, I knew some folks in the hacker community were working to fix this. As a Linux user, that is what I feel like hackers do. They fix things.

There were people, I heard, looking to find a way to put backward compatibility on the new machines. From my open-source inspired point of view, I saw this as a win-win for Sony. They were saving money by producing machines without backward compatibility, but other people could put it on the machines. Hackers were helping Sony out!

Finally, someone made the first big step toward that end. It was a hacker-kid aliased, Geohot, who was pretty famous already for his work on the iphone. What he had done on the iphone was engage in privilege escalation, or as it is known in hacker slang, "jailbreaking." He was able to do the same thing on the PS3. He used an opening in Sony's ability to use Linux in order to get full access to the firmware of the system. Using this, people could put retro compatibility back on!

When I read about Geohot's hack, I was proud of him. I hoped that Sony would start to fund his work a little and allow him to further develop useful hacks on their system. I guess that just shows how out-of-touch open source users are with the rest of the world. Sony did not praise Geohot, instead in their next update they deleted the Linux partition from everyone's machine, including mine.

That's when the stuff hit the fan.

Geohot figured out a way to put everyone's Linux partition back onto their machines. Sony responded with another update which would prevent that. The hacker community then created dongles which allowed users to get around Sony's updates. Then Sony created another update that made the dongles quit working. Then they made, I think, the biggest mistake of their corporate lives.

Sony sued Geohot.

Not only were they not funding him or thanking him, they were suing him! For those of us with ties to the hacker community, including every open-source user and advocate, this was a horrible insult. The proceedings dragged on with arguments over jurisdiction and definitions. Finally, they settled out of court. Geohot can't hack on the PS3 network, which he says he never did (he just hacked his own hardware), and Sony has to leave the poor boy alone.

When we bare our teeth.

The matter may have been settled with one hacker, but the open community were still a bit miffed. Hackers began an actual attack on Sony's Playstation Network. See, for the most part, hackers are good people who want our hardware to work better. However, there are some who are not good. Furthermore, I think the majority, who are very good people, take a bit of a vigilante view of justice. Since our community felt that Geohot had been wronged, some members of the community set out to right that wrong.

People don't know how dangerous those of us in the tech community really are. I think that if they knew, they would pay me better. If I am a hacker at all, I am probably the least skilled hacker on the planet. I have ties to the hacker community because I am primarily a Linux user and I find ways, often with help, to make things work. Still, I carry a flash drive with a small Linux OS on it. With that I can get into the files on your computer, if I can get my hands on it, even though I don't know your password. Using those files, I can get your passwords if you've saved them, your bank account records if you use a program like that, and for sure a list of your favorite sites. There are ways to stop me, but you probably don't use them (and neither do I). All you use is a firewall and a virus scanner. I don't break firewalls and I am generally against viruses. I can do it, and I am not awesome.

Hackers with more skills than me can be more dangerous. Much like cuddly dogs, however, they are dangerous only if provoked. Suing Geohot was extreme provocation. Several members of the hacker community have attacked the Playstation Network and done what some analysts are saying is 1.25 billion dollars in direct losses. Not only that, there have been further losses to third party developers for the PS3. Perhaps most disturbingly, the hackers got our credit card numbers and names. I've read some of the chat logs from the hackers working on this, and they were shocked that the information was stored in plain text. That's right, Sony stored our credit card information with absolutely zero encryption.

Probably most of the hackers who worked on this project are interested in hurting Sony, not the players. Honestly, after this fiasco I trust a group of unnamed hackers more than Sony. Sony has now said that they are going to pay for identity theft protection for all of us on their network, but all our information is out there now. Among other things, this prompted me to also change banks. The hackers have the number for an account that does not exist.

So who needs to apologize?

Sony needs to apologize. They need to explain why they are taking away our features, and they cannot give the normal corporate drivel about "security." That argument is gone for them now. They need to show that they understand this was a mistake. They need to promise return Linux functionality and backward compatibility to their systems. They need to stop discouraging homebrew applications. They need to promise a more open system.

When they do this, the hacker community needs to back off. This will be hard and is the biggest problem with vigilante justice. Vigilante justice seems to go beyond an eye for an eye and begins to demand a life for an eye. We can't let that happen here. If Sony repents we need to leave them standing.

Sony did some very wrong things, but the answer isn't to bring down the company. The answer is to bring the company in line with an ethical code which includes the freedom to use homebrew applications. Then it can function just fine alongside, or even working with the hacker community. If the hacker community doesn't back off when Sony comes to its senses, we won't have the credibility to demand accountability from future potential corporate tyrants.

The hacker community also needs to make sure that none of that account information is misused. The idea of the attack on the network was to bring pain to Sony. It was to vindicate those who payed money for certain services that Sony took away. It was not to steal money from those people. If those credit card numbers are misused, Sony is able to make the hacker community into the wrongdoers.

What should your average Joe do?

Well, Joe, avoid buying a PS3 or anything else from Sony for now. Sony is a great brand and has built lots of great stuff. However, they cannot be trusted right now. They sell products and services, then take those products away from their customers without refunding the money. I just don't trust them right now. If they change this attitude, by all means, buy them. Don't get rid of the stuff you have. That is just silly. I am going to keep using my PS3 and keep enjoying it, but if it breaks, I'm selling my games and buying an Xbox.

If you have a Playstation Network account, CHANGE YOUR BANK ACCOUNTS. The hacker community, as a whole, doesn't want to steal your money. However, with this hack literally thousands (possibly millions) of people have access to your credit card and debit card information. One of them might be evil. Call your banks or account holders and ask them to change your numbers. My wife and I even decided to change banks entirely (but there were other reasons besides just the Sony hack for that: the closest branch was far away; her job stopped doing direct deposit; it was a hat trick). And you know what, even if Sony repents of its sins and I start buying stuff off the Playstation Network again, I am not giving them my credit card number ever again. You can buy Playstation Network cards at your local big box store.

If you have a Playstation Network account, change your password as soon as things are back up and running. That has been compromised too.

Otherwise, support open applications written by hackers. As long as we are all working together, fiascoes like the Playstation Network outage do not need to happen. Hackers are good people who just want to make things work better. If we let them, we all benefit.

Riding the Narwhal into Heaven

Coming to terms with: open source, hackers, Linux and Ubuntu.

Riding the Narwhal

In his book, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman listed "uploading" as his fourth world-flattening force. This included collaborative projects such as wikis and open source software. One of the major open source projects is Linux, the open source operating system. Because Linux is open source, it comes in a variety of distributions. One of the most popular is Ubuntu, produced by Canonical.

Ubuntu has released their newest version, 11.04, codenamed Natty Narwhal. I did not immediately upgrade when it came out on Thursday. I waited for the weekend. The upgrade went smoothly. Here is a video about my initial, silly, reactions to the new operating system can be seen here.

S0, you can see, I am pretty excited about the new Unity desktop on Ubuntu's operating system. Admittedly, I get excited about some pretty unimportant things. I am very excited for the upcoming Thor and Captain America movies, for instance. This is different. I get excited about open source operating systems for a number of reasons, some of them are actually legitimate.

Hackers make life better.

One of the things that I love about Linux in general is that it is written by hackers for hackers. Ubuntu is a nice Linux derivative because it is made by hackers for everyone, including hackers. This allows hackers to do what they do best which is make life better.

I hear the term "hacker" associated with criminals all the time. Some hackers are criminals. So are many Caucasians, but it is correct to use neither of these terms synonymously with the term "criminals." There are many people who commit crimes using computers who are neither hackers nor Caucasians. There are also a majority of hackers and Caucasians whose acts are not criminal. However, there is something of a mindset of hackers that, I'll have to admit, lends itself to criminal action.

Bruce Scheier explained that a hacker is

"someone who thinks outside the box. It's someone who discards conventional wisdom, and does something else instead. It's someone who looks at the edge and wonders what's beyond. It's someone who sees a set of rules and wonders what happens if you don't follow them. A hacker is someone who experiments with the limitations of systems for intellectual curiosity" (citation)

I'd say that this is not always for intellectual curiosity. Sometimes necessity is the mother of hacking. Sometimes economics create a need that can't be filled without thinking outside the box. Sometimes there isn't time for conventional methods. Sometimes, once you've learned to do it, thinking outside someone else's box is just easier than trying to think inside one.

My dad is no computer expert, but from Scheier's point of view, he is a hacker. We drove a mini-van around for years with the engine block held in place using a block of wood he found. The legitimate fixes from mechanics never held. The block of wood did. I remember a number of winters where we ate a lot of fudge because he was trying to get a create a recipe that got the consistency of fudge he wanted on cheaper ingredients. My dad is a pastor and my wife is an amateur photographer. She has given him blanket permission to use her photographs for church. She has also put settings on her photosite that prevents direct downloading of her work. So, my Dad has told me that rather than call and ask each photo be sent, he takes a screen capture and edits. It's faster and more convenient. It's also not illegal because he has her permission.

Dad passed these values on to me. I believe in making what we have work and making things work cheap. My car's bumper is held on with bungee cords. I have a coolant leak sealed off with duck tape. And I've taken it a step further. My computers, not the ones for work, but my own computers, all run free open source software. Whenever I've gone the consumer route instead of the hacking route, I've regretted it. Dad taught me well.

So, when something doesn't work, a hacker makes it work. Really, this makes life better for everyone involved.

Hackers like to take things and figure out how to make them better for their own purposes which is a stumbling block for closed-source software producers. If they don't inhibit innovation, they cannot control distribution. See, if a person decides to make their code available, there is nothing stopping someone from just copying that code into their own computer and compiling it themselves, or putting it up on the internet where anyone can compile it. The only way for the public to make stuff better is to for distributors to make it free. So, for hackers to do what they do legally, there have to be open source options. These are options that a person can alter so they work better for themselves. They are also free to the public. Free does not intuitively seem like a good business model, but it does work sometimes.

How free works.

How does free software make money for its producers? The simple answer is that it doesn't. Most open source software is either a branch of a company that makes profits elsewhere, a private individual's offering that only gets that person a good reputation, a non-profit company or, in most cases, a combination of the three. Really, the idea that open source never produces profit is sort of not true.

Probably the most successful Open Source phenomena, the one that people always point to for open source success, is Firefox. Now, before I get comments arguing here, I am not advocating Firefox or even really endorsing Firefox. I am only using it as a case study because it seems to be an open source product everyone knows about.

Firefox is released under the Mozilla Public License, which is actually a somewhat restrictive license as far as open source licenses go. Still, it makes it so that one can view the code freely and alter it, at least for one's own use, freely. It is offered free to the public both compiled for installation in various operating systems and uncompiled, meaning just as code. Since it is free, it isn't something sold.

Mozilla is a non-profit organization, so if it made no profit that would be fine. However, the latest financial records, from 2009, show $104 million in revenue in 2009, according to their annual report. That is not Microsoft type of money, but it is a lot more than most of the non-profits I've worked with handle. Especially when one considers that this includes a loss of "$104,000 in investments from the Foundation's long-term portfolio as a result of economic conditions and investment values at the end of 2009."

The money came from all over the place. You can donate, it is a non-profit and the monies are tax deductible. A great deal of it came from grants. Most of it came from that little thing up in the right hand corner of your screen, if you are using Firefox. Google, Yahoo! and other companies payed Firefox to be included as automatic search choices. That is one means by which Open Source makes money.

Of course, Ubuntu also receives money from donations to its foundations, and in good years growth from its that foundation's investments. It also gets revenue from another source, customer support.

I've never used it. There is awesome support available from the Ubuntu community through their forums. Often, I've had to wait for a few days to get an answer, however.

Canonical, however, offers the services of paid hackers to help a person make things work perfectly for them. They do this without you having to wait. You pay for this service, Canonical makes money. Once again, not Microsoft level of money, but still, lots and lots of money.

The result is that the world is flattened and everyone benefits, except Apple and Microsoft.

I hope my readers know that saying I am "riding the Narwhal into Heaven" is hyperbole. Writing about open source computers brings out the techno-utopian in me. Yet, I know that Jesus said the poor will always be with us (Mat. 26:11). Yet I really think that through open source a number of people can move up.

See, hackers make things work and they make them work cheap. A block of wood in the engine, the fact that my bumper is held on by bungie cords, these are cheap. Open source can make it possible for the poorest people to have access to computer tools just like the rich. That means the poor can bring their blogs (like this one), their ideas and their products to market. It doesn't make everyone rich, but now everyone can compete.

The big software producers like Microsoft and Apple have fought pure open source. They have done so in courts, by giving cheap licenses to schools and universities so that students get addicted to consumer products and by simply failing to acknowledge their existence. I have noticed, however, that the companies realized that there are advantages to innovation of having open source products. The conundrum has resulted in even these companies releasing a few products open source.

Excitement is not so silly.

So, you see, my excitement over the newest innovation in Ubuntu is not so silly. Every open source innovation is a move in the right direction. It is a move to something better. It is a move that makes me excited.