So, Where Are These T1s and Public Wireless?

For those of you who knew the delays that we had last year with the new computers and the Gates Grant, you'll understand why we haven't gotten what we promised. We are at the mercy of a government bureaucracy and the accompanying red tape. Though all our paperwork is now properly filled, we still have to wait for notification, and it simply hasn't arrived yet; and we have no idea when it will.

Work has been progressing on the server; this coming Sunday we should have our content filtering and caching server switched from Mandriva 2006 to Xubuntu 7.0.4 Feisty Fawn. Then data from the WifiDog authentication server can be migrated to the newer one.

Update: Status of Upgraded T1s

As it turned out, we had one more piece of paperwork to file, and we only found out a few weeks ago. After receiving the wrong form, we have submitted this final piece of paperwork and we should be seeing our organization's name in the next wave. So, we are keeping our fingers crossed.

Immediately, or almost immediately, following the switch to faster T1s, we will be purchasing wireless routers and extending our public wireless system to all our branches. Slowly, the plan to consolidate content filtering and caching and WifiDog authentication has been going forward. At this point, it's just a matter of loading the data from the existing WifiDog database to the new one; which has presented a problem that will be solved soon.

The other problem, making sure that validation e-mails are not flagged as spam, will be solved when the server is up and running and we arrange to have our domain name registered with the server. That way, when someone does a ReverseDNS, it'll come up as being associated with our library.

Why Open-Source Is Not Evil

This is not quite a library technology blog entry, but it is related to libraries since among the materials we provide is music.

One of the publications I have a subscription with is The Linux Journal. This month's issue has an article about a company called Magnatune. Their motto is "We're Not Evil."

First, a little history/technical lesson.

I'm sure anyone who uses Myspace has at least heard of the iPod and iTunes--and their online music store. I have only used the iTunes store once, and was to download, for free, the pilot for a now defunct tv-series called "Conviction" (I'm a fan of the main characters from "Law & Order: SVU"), and a music video from the same series. I never downloaded or bought another track from their store. Why? Three Words: Digital Rights Management.

It's a technology that is supposed to (in theory) protect copyrighted works from piracy (people who make copies of music and movies and sell them for a profit, which mainly happens in Asia). In practice, it's both a pain and a joke.

It's a pain because you can only play what you downloaded on Apple's iTunes (Windows and Mac) and their iPod--that's all. Linux? Nope. There's this encryption scheme (part of DRM) that prevents it from playing. You don't have the freedom to play your purchased material on any device you want, or any platform. If you lose your files, you may or may not be able to re-download them without buying them again. Some services have some rather restrictive or harsh user agreements.

It's a joke because there are some very ingenious hackers (computer enthusiasts, not to be confused with pirates) that have found ways around DRM. DVDJon succeeded in 1999 with CSS (Content Scrambling System), that's used in movie DVDs (making it possible to play DVDs on anything, and copy them freely for anything), and is working on the next-generation DRM tech being used on High-Definition movie discs. The same goes for iTunes DRM audio files; the DRM data can be stripped away with a free utility found on the Internet.

Recently, Apple and EMI started offering music tracks without DRM for thirty cents more than the DRM-enabled tracks. They're touted as higher-quality too. At first, I was happy and felt it was at least a step in the right direction. But then I realized that you were paying more for freedom, which isn't right. Which lead me to Magnatune.

Actually, it lead me back to Magnatune because I already heard of the online music store but never really tried anything out. That's because you'll find that there are no mainstream artists on the site (yet). Their store is all independent artists. But, after reading the recent article in my beloved Linux mag, I decided to give it another look.

I'll simply sum it up by saying that they have some good quality stuff. You can download an album in any format--from a full-quality CD to MP3 (plus OGG, FLAC, WAV)--that are DRM free. The pricing is varied by you--meaning you can pay what you feel the music is worth, starting at $5 up (average is $8). 50% of the sale goes directly to the artist. Plus, they offer a track a day, 128kbps MP3 on their site, for free download. They offer licensing for commercial use as well.

I've already bought four CDs--a compilation of Mozart piano pieces, some new age, pop, and a Heavy Metal compilation. You can preview entire albums in either high or low quality audio streaming.

If you're into music, you might want to check out Magnatune.

Below is a short bibliography. You can find the latest Magnatune article in the August 2007 issue of The Linux Journal at your local bookstore. Please note that the Love's article has some objectionable language in it; the rest are G-Rated:

Information: about Magnatune. Magnatune. July 1, 2007. <http://www.magnatune.com/info/> July 11, 2007.

Magnatune, an Open Choice, iTunes an Expensive Choice. Lees, James. July 1, 2007. <http://interactive.linuxjournal.com/xstatic/abstracts/2007-08/bt9722> July 12, 2007.

Magnatune, an Open Music Experiment. Buckman, John. February 1, 2004. <http://linuxjournal.com/article/7220> July 12, 2007.

Salon.com Technology | Courtney Love Does The Math. Love, Courtney. June 14, 2000. <http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/> July 12, 2007.

Consolidating to One Server

In anticipation of fully deploying WifiDog to our other eight branch locations, I have been working on prepping our main server; a dual AMD Opteron with 2GB of RAM. Currently, the main server is serving duty as our content filtering and caching system.

In addition to this role, it will also host our authentication server; allowing us to retire the Pentium 3 Desktop PC and reduce the number of servers needed. Everything will be running on a new Linux distribution, Xubuntu 7.0.4, and will have the latest fresh versions of all the needed software.

The Wiki has been updated to reflect these upgrades and our current plans.

Current State of Internet Connections and Public Wifi

As of today, we are still waiting on word from the USF about our discount for the new Internet connections; we're at the ninth wave now. Still no word either way, and there may be several more waves to go.

In regard to public wifi, we are still going ahead after we get the new Internet connections. In regard to potential privacy issues, I can now administer the database that contains the information and "discard" old data. So, for example, if someone registered for an account a year ago, and hasn't been back since, that account can be deleted. Information about what user logged into what hotspot, when, for how long, and how much data was sent and received, that information can be "discarded" too. Therefore, we won't have to hold information indefinitely, we can discard it after a period of time (and under certain conditions) to maintain our patrons' privacy and overall system performance (larger databases require more resources to run).

An important reminder about wifi usage:

Anyone who is connected to our network via our hotspots will always be authorized to be there (unless, they are doing something illegal with our Internet Connection). The system is setup not only to protect our resources, but anyone who uses our service. This is an important consideration due to laws (both State and Federal) that now makes unauthorized connections to a computer network a crime. There are cases in Florida, Michigan and Alaska of people who were arrested (though in these cases, they were sitting out in the parking lot late at night or using a business' wifi without purchasing anything inside). All the other features discussed--capped bandwidth, hours of operation, hotspot maps, etc--will still be there.

Currently, validation e-mails may get flagged as spam or blocked since the server that sends the validation e-mails is not a registered system (in that it has a domain name attached to it). This will change in coming months. Charter and Comcast should accept them as-is, Yahoo and MSN will accept our validation e-mails, but will flag them as spam, or may block them (simple turn the spam filtering off, resend the validation e-mail, then turn back on), and AOL will block them outright. In the event that a validation e-mail can't be accessed, an account can still be validated; it is a short and simple process that takes only a few minutes.