Tomorrow Wikipedia will be unavailable.
Founder Jimmy Wales announced on Twitter that Wikipedia will protest against SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). Jimmy Wales said that these laws would change the free internet in something like they have in China, Malaysia and Iran.
Official statement:
To: English Wikipedia Readers and Community
From: Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director
Date: January 16, 2012
Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECTIP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate—that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.
This will be the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public protest of this nature, and it’s a decision that wasn’t lightly made. Here’s how it’s been described by the three Wikipedia administrators who formally facilitated the community’s discussion. From the public statement, signed by User:NuclearWarfare, User:Risker and User:Billinghurst:
- It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.
- Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a “blackout” of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.
- On careful review of this discussion, the closing administrators note the broad-based support for action from Wikipedians around the world, not just from within the United States. The primary objection to a global blackout came from those who preferred that the blackout be limited to readers from the United States, with the rest of the world seeing a simple banner notice instead. We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a blackout preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns about similar legislation in other nations.
In making this decision, Wikipedians will be criticized for seeming to abandon neutrality to take a political position. That’s a real, legitimate issue. We want people to trust Wikipedia, not worry that it is trying to propagandize them.
But although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not. As Wikimedia Foundation board member Kat Walsh wrote on one of our mailing lists recently,
- We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression. For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and collecting the world’s knowledge. We’re putting it in context, and showing people how to make to sense of it.
- But that knowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use it. Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikimedia. Where you can only speak if you have sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or, if your views are pre-approved by someone who does, the same narrow set of ideas already popular will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access to.
The decision to shut down the English Wikipedia wasn’t made by me; it was made by editors, through a consensus decision-making process. But I support it.
Like Kat and the rest of the Wikimedia Foundation Board, I have increasingly begun to think of Wikipedia’s public voice, and the goodwill people have for Wikipedia, as a resource that wants to be used for the benefit of the public. Readers trust Wikipedia because they know that despite its faults, Wikipedia’s heart is in the right place. It’s not aiming to monetize their eyeballs or make them believe some particular thing, or sell them a product. Wikipedia has no hidden agenda: it just wants to be helpful.
That’s less true of other sites. Most are commercially motivated: their purpose is to make money. That doesn’t mean they don’t have a desire to make the world a better place—many do!—but it does mean that their positions and actions need to be understood in the context of conflicting interests.
My hope is that when Wikipedia shuts down on January 18, people will understand that we’re doing it for our readers. We support everyone’s right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. We think everyone should have access to educational material on a wide range of subjects, even if they can’t pay for it. We believe in a free and open Internet where information can be shared without impediment. We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA—and PIPA, and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States—don’t advance the interests of the general public. You can read a very good list of reasons to oppose SOPA and PIPA here, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Why is this a global action, rather than US-only? And why now, if some American legislators appear to be in tactical retreat on SOPA?
The reality is that we don’t think SOPA is going away, and PIPA is still quite active. Moreover, SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem. All around the world, we’re seeing the development of legislation seeking to regulate the Internet in other ways while hurting our online freedoms. Our concern extends beyond SOPA and PIPA: they are just part of the problem. We want the Internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone.
On January 18, we hope you’ll agree with us, and will do what you can to make your own voice heard.
Sue Gardner,
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Tweetdeck has become a Twitter company and now Twitter is in charge, in this case the takeover is probably going to be the exit for TweetDeck for many people…
I have to say I only had the 1.xx version on my desktop for a view minutes before I reinstalled the old 0.38.2 version.
TweetDeck has become a horrible program to work with, The most important changes that gone bad:
- When you want to send an update you get a popup, they should know by now that popups are not done.
- When you actually want to send the update you can not hit ‘Enter’ like before but you need your mouse to point and click.
- The link shorten options have been reduced to 2 standard options, both are very slow and I prefer my own service.
That did it for me, de-installed TweetDeck and reinstalled the old one.
If you also like to get the old TweetDeck you can use this link
The Cortex A9 I bought comes with Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread) but that is not really a tablet OS. Google did not
release the source code for Android 3, the tablet version, so there is no Chinese tablet with this version available.
Zenithink, the manufacturer of the ZT-280 C91 (the official name of the A9) released a Beta version of
Ice Cream Sandwich.
Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 4.0, is the first hybrid Android OS. It can be used on phones and tablets. I could not
wait to install it and test it….
So I did:
I charged the tablet fully and started flashing it with the 4.0.1 image. After installation, takes about 2 minutes, it
boots up with the known blue Zepad screen.
After booting I had to complete the setup wizard and enter my Gmail account to complete it.
The locked screen looks a bit different from the previous versions:
You have to swipe the lock to a position that is shown when you touch the lock.
As you can see the information bar is now at the bottom of the screen, with the previous versions it was at the top of the screen. |  |
 | The home screen is similar to what we know, icons on the background. The icons are a bit bigger and you can not but them at the edge of the screen but it still looks nice. The icon to go to the drawer is at the right top. |
Inside the drawer the icons are also a bit larger and widgets can not be found by holding your finger at the home screen but can be found in a tab in the drawer.
Also a shortcut to the market can be found at the right top corner of the drawer.
|  |
 | The markets looks just as before on the tablet. |
The settings tool looks a bit different, better.
as you see on the screenshot it keeps track of your data usage, can come in handy..
|  |
 | I took it of the charger 11 hours, 42 minutes and 32 seconds ago and still I got 69% left.
Today I used it to communicate with MSN, read some mail and installed some software.
Just an average day you could say.
Not too bad for a cheap ass tablet. |
Update:
I left the tablet standby during the night and turned it on at 6:35 this morning.
As you can see it has now 19% power left after 21 hours, 51 minutes and 34 seconds. |  |
Looks good after one day, not sure if I found any bugs…
2011 was the year of the Tablet Computer (TC) and Android. Not sure what next year will bring but lets hope that it will be just as exciting as last year.
In 2011 I have tested some Chinese build, very cheap, gadgets and next year I will do the same.
I hope you all enjoy reading about these cheap Chinese goodies and see it as a cheaper alternative for the, mostly expensive, American and European gadgets.
Have fun all,
Ron
Last week I ordered a Cortex a9 10” ZePad tablet from China.
Yesterday it arrived and of course I had to write about my findings.
I opened the box at the office and everyone who looked at the device said that it looked and felt nice and solid (the picture is taken after I used it).
The Specifications in the description are promising:
- 10” Capacitive 1024x600 multi touch screen
- 1 Ghz CPU
- 512 Mb RAM
- 4 GB storage
- Wifi 802.11b/g/n
- HDMI out
- Camera
- SDcard slot
- USB connector
- Android 2.3 touch optimized
After charging it I could play with it, it took about 2-2,5 hours for a full load, not too bad. The first thing I noticed was the bright screen, it looks great, the size is just right (22,5x12,5cm) and has an exact 16:9 dimension so it is perfect for watching movies.
The touch screen response is fast you actually do not have to touch it it responds even when hovering your fingertip 1 mm above the screen.
There are some differences in software if you compare it with previous Chinese tablets, this has no Chinese software installed, it is a nice clean installation with only the basic software and no bogus, unneeded, unwanted software. It is already rooted with a command shell installed, I like that..
I think I will have a lot of fun with this tablet.
Of course there are some things that are not so great, the charger that came with the tablet is a UK charger and will not fit in the European main land sockets:
But I got a power socket converter to make it fit (thanks Maarten).
Together with this order I also ordered a keyboard case and that came with a screen protector for the tablet.
It looks great and solid but it does not really fit, as you can see on the right photo and the one below.
The screen protector is also not fitted for this device
Not sure what the hole does there and why it is 2 sizes too large, the camera is not even near by.
The case could work but the protector can go right in the trash.
The tablet seems to be worth the money, the case I do not think so.
The old look of the site was already a couple of years old. Today I decided to change it so I did..
Hope you all like it.
Almost 6 months ago I bought a Star A 5000 Android 2.2 phone from China and I still use it.
It is much better than the Star A3000 I had before and if you look at it you would see it is still not damaged in any way you would think if you consider the origin and the used products to build it.
The screen and body are still unharmed even after I dropped it on the floor a couple of times in the last 6 months. The battery does still last 48 hours on average use, I am a heavy user and charge it every day.
I have 2 sim cards installed, 1 for personal use and 1 for business use. I text and use whatsapp a lot and have several phone calls a day, about 1,5 - 2 hours talking time.
Up until now it sounds like the perfect phone but off course a cheap ass phone like this can not be all good.. and it is not.
The down side of this phone is:
- When you bring the phone to your ear the screen should lock but that does not happen, have to push the top button to do it by hand.
- The CPU should be a bit faster, for normal use it is a great phone but playing games is almost not done.
- There are no firmware updates available.
Conclusion: I am still not thinking of buying another phone and still use this one daily so you could consider this a good buy for the 125 Euro it costs.
Steve Jobs
1955-2011
Today Steve Job died at the age of 56, that is too young to die.
For me there where two man in the last 30 years that change all our lives, Steve Jobs was one of them, he competed with Bill Gates to make the best product ever and in that process they changed the world and I do not think they could have done it without each other.
Apple products are often no technical exiting devices but the design is good and the marketing is superb. We have to wait how the death of Steve Jobs have influence on the future of Apple, Steve was the motor behind every step they made.
The period he was no longer working at Apple the stocks dropped, the products sucked and Apple almost went bankrupt and Bill Gates had to save Apple by a money injection.
Apple did find it’s way back to the top but only after Steve Jobs came back as CEO. At present time many people buy apple gadgets and standing in line for hours to get the latest, Apple is a strong company again.
Knowing all of this you can say that Steve Jobs changed many lives but also that Apple needed him to carry the company to it’s current level. Will the company survive without Steve?
Only time will tell.
I must say that I do not own an Apple product and maybe I never will but still.. Steve also changed my live, his way of thinking changed technology as we know it today.
Too bad that someone dies that young, he could have done so much more.
Usually I show some findings about gadgets I bought, mostly from China, but this time it is a software review..
Some time ago I found the Opendedup project on http://opendedup.org/. The software package is called SDFS, SDFS is java based and runs on Linux or Windows (both 64-bit).
Some notes from the Opendup website:
Using deduplication has two big advantages over a normal file system.
- Reduced Storage Allocation - Deduplication can reduce storage needs by up to 90%-95% for files such VMDKs and backups. Basically situations where you are storing a lot of redundant data can see huge benefits.
- Efficient Volume Replication - Since only unique data is written disk, only those blocks need to be replicated. This can reduce traffic for replicating data by 90%-95% depending on the application.
Using SDFS adds a couple additional advantages based on its achitecture.
- Scalability : SDSF can store huge amounts of data (over a Petabyte) and can deduplicated at block sizes as small as 4k.
- IO Performance : SDFS can be setup in a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Nodes (RAIN) configuration. In a RAIN configuration SDFS can stream reads and writes, in parallel, across multiple nodes allowing for huge IO performance increases.
I have tested SDFS on CentOS 6.0 because the needed Fuse 2.8 is supported on this..
I used a virtual machine on VMware with a 20 GB disk for the OS and mounted an extra 135 GB disk to /opt, SDFS stores the dedupe chuncks in /opt/sdfs/volumes/<volumename>
The needed packages; Opendup Binaries and Java JDK 7
Just download them to an empty directory and run “yum install jdk-7-linux-x64.rpm SDFS-1.0.7-2.x86_64.rpm” all needed dependencies will be installed.
After installation you can create a volume with the following command; “mkfs.sdfs --volume-name=sdfs_vol1 --volume-capacity=100GB” you could change the block size, I tested the default 128k, 64k and 4k blocksize but with the 4k blocksize java crashes.
After creation you can mount the virtual volume to any path you want but it has to be empty. I mounted it to the /home directory; “mount.sdfs -v sdfs_vol1 –m /home”
All files stored in /home/<user> directory is inline deduplicated.
To see what the status is of your volumes use; “sdfscli --volume-info” it shows the deduplication ratio etc.
Something not mentioned on the opendedup website is that when you copy a large amount of files to the virtual volume java could encounter a “too many open files” error and your chucks can get corrupted. To fix this problem I edited /etc/security/limits.conf and added the following 2 lines:
- * soft nofile 4096
- * hard nofile 10240
This changes the default max open files amount.
I added the line “mount.sdfs -v sdfs_vol1 -m /home/” to the /etc/rc.local file to make sure the virtual volume is mounted at every boot.
If you follow above steps you should be able to build a storage device with a dedupe filesystem, I added SAMBA-Server myself to use the dedupe filesystem as a Windows fileserver..
Some stats:
[root@backup-01 ~]# sdfscli --dse-info
DSE Max Size : 136 GB
DSE Current Size : 15.2 GB
DSE Percent Full : 11.17%
DSE Page Size : 131072
DSE Blocks Available for Reuse : 0
[root@backup-01 ~]# sdfscli --volume-info
Volume Capacity : 135 GB
Volume Current Size : 21.8 GB
Volume Max Percentage Full : Unlimited
Volume Duplicate Data Written : 25.7 GB
Volume Unique Data Written: 432.6 MB
Volume Data Read : 9.1 KB
Volume Virtual Dedup Rate (Dup/Total Bytes Written) : 98.38%
Volume Real Dedup Rate (DSE Size/Total Bytes Written) : 41.73%
Volume Actual Storage Savings (Unique Blocks Stored/Current Size) : 30.26%
As you can see I have a 135 GB volume but the stats are a bit confusing 
Last phone I bought was the Star A3000 from China, the phone works great but does not look that fancy and it has a resistive screen.
Time to get myself a better looking phone with a capacitive screen.
I like Android, works smooth, lots of free software, easy to use etc..
So it had to have android again..
The Star A5000 is the newer version of the Star phones from China with some additional features the A3000 does not have
but mostly it is similar. You can order it with a resistive or capacitive screen, I got the capacitive one.
As you can see the phone looks much better than the A3000, it looks like the HTC desire Z (but without the hardware keyboard).
Something that is better than the old one is that the battery gives more power and lasts a bit longer, I guess the screen uses a
bit more power than the resistive one.
+ Looks
+ Battery lifetime
+ Capacitive Screen
+ Dual SIM
- Top button hard to press.
I would definitely recommend this phone