Standard Mischief

Here’s a good little article from Make magazine, (and an earlier text version).They call it a “Maker’s Bill of Rights”, but I really don’t like that label because I think it cheapens, you know, actual civil rights. I’d probably call it something like “a humble request from your finicky consumers who are more than willing to drop their cash on a better product from a more consumer friendly company”. Here’s an except:

- Meaningful and specific parts lists shall be included.
- Cases shall be easy to open.
- Batteries should be replaceable.
- Special tools are allowed only for darn good reasons.
…

All good sensible stuff. As the cost to publish schematics and parts lists on the web is already so close to zero, and the data must already be put in a usable format for internal company use, there’s little to be made by withholding it from the general public.

One could argue that by providing the information for free, one is losing a valuable revenue stream, to which I would counter that inexpensive or easily available product information tends to generate the type of good will that is valuable, yet is not easily shown on the next quarterly profit statement.

Another argument would be that product firmware is proprietary and the like needs to be kept from competitors, and while I can see this to be sometimes true, you need to balance that against the fact that your competitors may very well have the resources to (legally) reverse-engineer your product anyway and therefore you only end up keeping things souper seekret from your pissed off consumers.

The one thing I would add to the manifesto would be something like “The after-market that springs forth from the success of your product is your friend, not your enemy. Embrace it.”

An example of a product that embraces these concepts might be Ladyada’s x0xb0x (pronounced “zocks box”). It’s a “better than the original copy” of an obscure music widget that has found a second life, after the original manufacture dropped it from it’s product line, as something somehow suitable for composing Techno music (excuse the fuzziness for a description, I generally hate Techno music). Although it’s a nitch product, it’s been so successful that there’s actually a waiting list to buy one, and the product comes in a kit form that must be assembled by the end user. A mature product, I see it’s already up to assembly run number five.. Of course the entire product is well documented; doing so has allowed a community to form, and enhancements created by enthusiastic users are shared back with the community. The firmware is, of course, open source, and here again users have submitted bug fixes and improvements which make the product even more valuable to it’s users.

Another, more mainstream company, is MEC (Mayville Engineering Company) who make shotshell reloaders. [1] Seven years ago I acquired a reloading press at a flea market and I was easily able to get a manual and a missing part for the press by mail. The replacement part was inexpensive, and as I was trying the figure out how to pay for the part, the gentleman that was staffing the phones that Sunday said that he’d just ship it out free and told me I could mail them a check when it arrived. They also gave me a line on a few third party resellers that had the accessories that I was interested in purchasing. The helpline tech was quite knowledgeable and was able to tell me exactly how to set up the press for the type of reloading I was interested in doing. It wasn’t some guy with a fake English name, a foreign accent that was hard to understand, or a habit for apologized profusely.

I’ve just checked a moment ago, and found that now that I have teh inter-tubes, all the manuals I could ever want are freely available to download. Awesome. A+++ Would do have done business with again.

Related: Sony breaks almost all these rules. Read Why Sony sux.

[1] Background information on Wikipedia about handloading. Reloading my own ammunition is recycling.

I love reading Claire Wolfe. The money quote here really struck a chord with me. You can click on the quote if you want to read the entire post.

I love Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite of all holidays. No artificial good cheer. No Christian facades pasted over pagan revels. No endless shopping. Just being with those you love and spending time in peaceful gratitude.

RAmen to that, Claire!

We do a “secret Santa” scenario with the siblings, so that tends to keep down on the shopping blitz bliss during this holiday season. I also have a current opening for my new SO, and because of that, there’s another holiday gift decision/stressful purchase that I do not get to endure enjoy.

Everyone else? Well I’m probably going to teach myself the fine art of homemade cheesecake baking. Handmade gifts for Christmas := my Anti-commercialism.

By the way, I’d be remiss if I did not link to Buy Nothing Day.

(I love this logo. It was taken (not hotlinked) from adbusters.org. Note the leet speakage in the barcode, a nice touch.)

My after-Thanksgiving tradition is actually to go dumpster-diving, but I slept in. I usually like to go in the early AM. You get daylight and it’s after the drunks and troublemakers have passed out, but before most everyone else has woken up. Perhaps tomorrow.

I actually am a lot more discriminating on what I decide to pick-up nowadays, but there’s little that tops the thrill of plucking out that engine-stand out of the dumpster just before you actually needed to go buy one, or the thrill of finding discarded live ammunition.

Is there anything better than homemade pot-stickers?

Besides, you know, getting someone else to make them?

Many hands make light work, and everyone else grabbed the more traditional dishes, so I picked one of my favorites.

Best wishes this Thanksgiving.

So I was going to comment on the UCLA student tazer incident, but it’s already being commented on all over the place, and any unique insight I might have, I’ve already commented on elsewhere. So I’ll just point you there.

I usually value PawPaw’s opinion because he is a LEO, but he does not seem to always have a knee-jerk defensive reaction to possible police misconduct. I think he’s wrong here and say as such in comments.

His post is right here.

The title of this post is a quote from Mostafa Tabatabainejad, as he lay on the floor of the library, handcuffed, in-between being shocked by the campus police. The video was very disturbing, and there was more than one person recording it all on a cellphone..

Here’s Claire Wolfe’s take on the story, and she also has the link to the videos on YouTube.

It was a big decision for me, because I have voted in every election since I’ve turned 18. I even cast a vote two years ago, declining to vote for the president but casting a ballot for the other races. This time I felt not casting a vote would send a better message.

I’ve just turned on the radio and heard the results for several hotly contested Maryland races.

In the Governor’s race, Bob Ehrlich managed to wrangle a B grade from the NRA, despite not doing a damn thing to support the RKBA during the last 4 years. He did not even attempt to fulfill a single one of his campaign promises towards us, even though the “vote freedom first” faction was a huge help to get the first Republican governor elected to the state since Spiro Agnew. Although I detest the thought O’Malley winning the office, we can’t let the critters know that we’ll vote for them even if they lie to us, even if the other guy is worse.

As of this morning, that race is undecided.

Another hotly contested race was for the senate. Michale Steele, currently serving as our Lieutenant Governor, has refused to indicate any support for or against the RKBA. It seems like Steele wants to have it both ways. Despite this ambiguous position, this critter has also managed to score a B rating from the 700 pound gorilla of the pro-freedom movement. Looks like Steele lost his bid.

In a refreshing change, the yo-yos in the Libertarian party either failed to get enough signatures to get anyone on the ballot, or chose to not waste any funds on races they could not possibly win. Unfortunately, they also failed to initiate any pro-freedom ballot initiatives or even solicit anyone’s vote either way on any questions and amendments. It is my sincere wish the the big “L” losers in this state shrivel away, lose their wack-job members, and reform under a new banner as an effective political party, instead of the joke they are now.