Community Participation, Done Right (Lawyers Too!)

The Fedora Project Contributors' Agreement (sometimes/formerly "CLA", the L is License/ing) must be signed by everyone who registers with the Fedora Account System and receives credentials allowing them to contribute to the project. (That includes software packaging, wiki editing, code checkins, and so on.) It sets the tone both for members' activities within the community, and for that community's relationship with its leaders.

For an open-source, community-driven project's organizational body to be respectful of that community, it mustn't put its own interests ahead of theirs. In fact, it shouldn't even have a concept of "its own interests" distinct from theirs; its only interests are the community's. Any goals that organization has should be narrowly defined, and any rights or authority it asserts should, when faced with conflict or overlap, be deferred. That's the model of a responsible governing body, one that wishes only to consolidate and guide the efforts of its contributors for the benefit of all involved, not appropriate those contributions for its own benefit or profit.

That's why, for Fedora contributors agreeing to & signing the CLA, almost more important than what that does mean is what the agreement doesn't mean. And why, in recognition of that fact, the text of the CLA opens with explicit statements of both points:

The Fedora Project Contributor Agreement

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Fedora_Project_Contributor_Agreement

Goal

We require that contributors to Fedora (as defined below) agree to this Fedora Project Contributor Agreement (FPCA) to ensure that contributions to Fedora have acceptable licensing terms.

Non-Goals

The FPCA is *not* a copyright assignment agreement.

The FPCA does *not* somehow supersede the existing licensing terms that apply to Fedora contributions. There are two important subpoints here. First, the FPCA does not apply to upstream code (or other material) that you didn't write; indeed, it would be preposterous for it to attempt to do so. Note the narrow way in which we have defined capital-c "Contribution". Second, the main provision of the FPCA specifies that a default license will apply to code that you wrote, but only to the extent that you have not bothered to put an explicit license on it. Therefore, the FPCA is *not* some sort of special permissive license granted to any party, despite the explicit choice of a more restrictive license by you or by upstream developers.

...Commendable. And why FESCo (the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee), the Fedora Project Board, and anyone else involved should be commended. In this time when free websites have Terms of Use claiming exclusive ownership of everything their users do on the site, this type of dedication to putting the community first — even in their lawyers' fine print — is all too rare.

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Samsung Transform phone Review: Awesome keyboard, substandard everything-else

[Since I bothered to bang out this review of my Android phone over on Samsung's site, and I have no idea if it'll ever see the light of day there, I thought I'd mirror it here, with additional details that are apparently forbidden in Samsung-site reviews. Like prices, or mentioning any competitor products or sites.]

 ...OK, to be honest the screen's not half bad, either.

I was dead-set on replacing my previous Instinct with a phone that had a REAL physical keyboard, and the Transform's is possibly the best keyboard Samsung has ever designed. Great feel and no weird layout "stuff". (Looking at you, Moment keyboard!) But, obviously, the main selling point for the Transform is its price. An Android phone for $50? Sign me up!

Problem is, you really do get what you pay for when you buy a "cheap" Android phone. The Transform's biggest failing is simple: It. Is. SLOOOOOOW. Criminally slow. Occasionally-goes-out-for-a-walk-and-just-gets-lost slow. "Background services? Sure, I can do that... *OR* I can let you answer a call" slow.

Shortly after buying the phone, I ran some random benchmark app (all-but-useless for practical purposes, but still better than comparing clock speeds or other specs for relative comparisons) on my Transform. On whatever arbitrary scale it used, my phone's score was ONE TENTH the rating of the HTC Evo, one of Sprint's then-flagship Android phones. The Transform really did score just 10% of the Evo's benchmark result.

Now, that kind of phone is a serious mobile device with a zippy CPU; you'd expect the Transform to be slower. But TEN TIMES as slow? Which is not to say that every operation takes 10x as long on the Transform. But it does mean that it has to "ThinkRealHard!" for up to ten times as long, for each of those operations. It means that when even a few stack up, severe delays build up fast. (The ONLY thing the phone does quickly: get bogged down!)

It means that, if you're unfortunate enough to be doing anything with the phone at the moment the Alarm Clock triggers, causing the alarm popup to get lost, you will be forced to endure several seconds of loud beeping/buzzing/etc, all throughout the time it takes you to get to and then pull down the notiifcation tray, tap on the alarm notification, wait for the dialog to come up, and then select and have it process your response. (Nothing else will silence it short of pulling the battery — a better approach for particularly embarrassing situations. Of course, Google has to share some of the blame here, for an OS that violates the *one* well-established mobile convention: Whenever the phone is emitting ANY audible noise, pressing Volume Down should ALWAYS silence it immediately, without exception, no backsies.)

Because the CPU really only has two operating states — idle or near-catatonically overloaded — its power management has little practical use. Thus, battery life is... unstellar. (After learning a few new habits to save on power, though, I've found it pretty manageable.)

Lastly, factor in Samsung's unsurprising lack of enthusiasm for actively supporting a device that can't possibly represent any significant profit for them. As evidenced by the months of delays before the 2.2 update was released (though that issue affected their entire lineup), the fact that the 2.2 update that *was* finally released is actually worse in several ways (unless Samsung can explain how adding a reverse-landscape rotation orientation to a side-slider phone is somehow a feature!), and the fact that in the time since the 2.2 update finally appeared, no further update has been released or even hinted at to fix the issues with the current build.

The 2.2 update did shave several seconds off the phone's boot time — a welcome change, but still far from a gold-star feature for the phone. With the official Froyo build, time to cold-boot my Transform after an orderly shutdown, from first touch of the power button to the moment the lock screen appears: 2 minutes and 2.65 seconds. ...Yay.

Engadget and ilk have made excellent arguments against "budget" Android phones like the Transform, usually pointing out that "last year's model" of a REAL phone can be had for similar price, and will likely still be superior. I can only add that, even as a relatively-content 6-month Transform owner, I agree. The phone is "fine" for what it is, and I knew what I was getting into, but if I had it to do over again I'd look for a better solution than the Transform.

But I'd really miss that keyboard! 

Pros: Bright display, excellent keyboard 

Cons: Poor quality, slow, poor battery life

Final Verdict? No, I would not recommend it to a friend.

(...Possibly an enemy.)

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For Gary, a reminder of conversations past...

Frank  WTF? NOT _AGAIN_! This happened once before on my account, and disappeared almost immediately -- the top of my feed has been replaced with a Share: box containing four links, and I have to click one of them to get an input box. It is _AWFUL_ and Assbook is *ON*CRACK* if they think this is a good idea!!

December 10, 2010 at 3:49 am

Julie  Mine has been like that since I switched tov the new profile 5 days ago. It is like that when I go to other people's walls too.
December 10, 2010 at 3:59 am

Frank  How is nobody else complaining about this, then????
...And why are you _awake_? :)
December 10, 2010 at 4:09 am

Gary  It's the new software they rolled out a few days ago. It is the new and permanent change.
December 10, 2010 at 4:14 am

Frank  Not if there's a backlash to end all backlashes.
December 10, 2010 at 4:15 am

Frank  There's no such thing as "permanent" in software, WTF does that even _MEAN_???
December 10, 2010 at 4:16 am

Gary  It won't revert back to the earlier version.
December 10, 2010 at 4:16 am

Frank  ... ... ...You work at Facebook, now? Congrats on the new job!
December 10, 2010 at 4:36 am

Gary  Thanks! I'll make sure your complaint gets routed to the appropriate individual. We are now serving number 37...your number is 354,726,586,324,591.45. Feel free to have a seat and wait.
December 10, 2010 at 4:38 am

Sean  Yea I've had that box since the new profiles were rolled out. I find the new design much more clunky but oh well they don't care.
December 10, 2010 at 8:41 am

Julie  I *was* awake giving the baby the boob!
December 10, 2010 at 10:24 am

Frank  MY BRAIN-EYES!!!!! *spaf!*
December 10, 2010 at 1:03 pm

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Doctor Who Season 6 Trailer (US viewers)

Stetsons are cool.

The Physical Keyboard on my Samsung Transform

Here's a look at the Samsung Transform (SPH-M920) in physical input mode. The phone, which I upgraded to last week, is an Android 2.1 (so far) device carried by Sprint since October 2010. The original image was lifted from Phandroid's Android Forums (er... thanks!), but I've adjusted it to enhance the visibility of the orange labels. (They're still somewhat indistinct, I know — my apologies.)

Overall, I lucked out with this phone in terms of keyboard. The Transform has one of the nicest keyboards Samsung's ever produced... and in a time when they've been experimenting with a lot of WEIRD designs (see below). I was dreading the thought of getting a phone with a keyboard I'd have to "learn to live with", but instead the Transform has made me even more spoiled & snobbish than I already was.

Still, there are the inevitable few annoyances, made all the more glaring by the otherwise excellent nature of the keyboard. And one or two choices about its layout are simply braindead, and make you wonder what line of reasoning could possibly have led Samsung to them.

First off, let's leap right to the single most infuriating thing about the Transform: Why, in the name of all that is good and right in the universe, is comma not bound on the period key (Fn-period)??? If you can't make the label out, comma is Fn-N. Fn-period is wasted on an insipid and questionably-useful ".com" shortcut binding. I'm guessing an association on "dot" explains the location, but it sucks. If Samsung was hell-bent on a ".com" key, they should at least have gone conceptual ("Internet") and bound it to Fn-@.

For that matter, why do the @ key and the ? have no alternate mappings at all? (Well, they do, but Fn-@ is just @, and Fn-? is still ?) What, they completely ran out of symbols that seemed useful to include? The lack of Fn-@ is particularly infuriating, as it's the obvious location for ".com" and that symbol's actual placement is so shitty. But I'm sure they could have come up with something useful for Fn-?, too. For one thing, there's no tilde to be found anywhere.

There are also visual frustrations. Why can't someone come up with alt-symbol labeling that lets you clearly differentiate, even at a quick glance, between comma (Fn-N) and apostrophe (Fn-K)? Or between hyphen (Fn-X) and underscore (Fn-V), for that matter? Both of those pairs are easily confused, when scanning for a character while typing. Even now that I'm more familiar with the layout, I still sometimes screw it up.

I have a feeling the distinctions would be far clearer, although it would mean breaking their label rules, if Samsung had placed the comma and underscore labels low on the key – to the right of the main label, instead of above-right. Since they're orange, I think it would still be clear what that means. And lower placement for those baseline symbols would avoid them appearing "up in the air", where they look confusingly like their higher-placement counterparts.

An Aside: Samsung's "Creative" Keyboard Layouts

How weird have some of Sammy's recent keyboards been? Think "space bar in the middle of the ZXCV__BNM row"-level weird! (That's the Intercept, my phone's immediate predecessor.) There are other weirdnesses, and other models with different craziness. A lot of shit you just can't imagine anyone wanting.

It's reminiscent of Nokia in the early 2000's, when they inexplicably decided to reinvent the dial pad. Suddenly they were producing phones with circular button layouts (that's right, pushbuttons arranged like a rotary phone) and similar types of insanity. That went "well" for them, as I'm sure you can imagine, so Samsung apparently chose to emulate it. :-/  The excellent, very conservative keyboard on the Transform may be a sign that Samsung's fiddling was received about as well as Nokia's.

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In Defense Of "Boring" Writing

A while ago, there was a post on Language Log regarding a particular familiar six-word phrase or saying. Part of the comment discussion went to the question of why some phrases appear very frequently "in public" (meaning: on the web / in Google's index). While, in contrast, research has shown that almost any other phrase of at least 6 words will be completely unique, even within a space as vast as the entire public web.

My explanation for why many "common" phrases are so common: There's a vast degree of utility to them! Not only for the supposedly-"lazy" author, but they can be extremely helpful to the reader. As an example, consider the following...

A few years back, one particular bank in my area attempted to "humanize" their ATMs. In some misguided bid to make the interface more "friendly", the standard prompts and options were rewritten to use casual phrasing and less stilted language. Messages to the user were frequently written in first-person form ("What can I help you with?", "Please tell me your secret code"), and even the "Yes" and "No" selection buttons became "Sure" and "No, Thanks".

I doubt that software is still in place, but I wouldn't know — it drove me away from using those ATMs almost immediately. The simplest transaction took me at least twice as long on their machines, and the number of times I chose too quickly and accidentally hit the wrong option became intolerable. It was quicker and less aggravating to walk an extra block to a different bank, than to face their "friendly" interface.

We expect to see "Yes" and "No", when we're making choices at an ATM. They don't use those particular words because they're thrilling and clever turns of phrase, but because they're not! They're the most common, boring representations of their respective concepts. We're immediately able to match those words to the choices they represent, and we don't even need to consciously read the labels. But replace "Yes" with "Sure", and you're forced to read the words, then actively think about their meanings and determine which one represents your intended response, before you can press the correct button.

Cliches and "standard" phrasings serve a similar purpose, in purely utilitarian communication. I can recognize and derive meaning from the words "before turning the gun on himself" without even reading the entire phrase, because it's immediately familiar to me. Which, in turn, means that I can read an article written using such phrasing far more quickly, and without devoting nearly as much concentration to the act, as when I read something crafted using unique, elegantly-formed, interesting sentences.

Interesting, unique writing has its place, and its appeal. But to facilitate the simplest and most efficient transfer of knowledge/information, so does its opposite.

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I Write Like...

According to I Write Like, based on the content of my previous entry ("The MTA's Signage Stupidity, 138 St. - 3 Av. in the Bronx")...

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Ummm... 'kay. Thanks, I guess? Never actually read him.

(Just as long as I don't kick at 46! Tho I doubt I have the cojones to hang myself; probably in the clear, there. *phew!*)

-FeRD

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