I am blessed in many ways, but the thing I value most is to work with kids.  I'd like to say that doing so keeps me young but I can't...that would take a miracle on the level of loaves and fishes...

I do own a mirror or two.

Most of our work...work done by The HeliOS Project involves working with kids one-on-one.  We find children that do not have computers due to financial disadvantage
 then we build them one from donated or broken machines.  It is indeed gratifying work.  I have not had many chances to work with kids in large groups before...I mean working with them in a technical environment.

Until last week.

Skip Guenter, who is our Director of System Engineering lives in Hutto Texas....about 15 miles outside of Austin.  Pastor Paul Gravley of the Discovery United Methodist Church of Hutto approached Skip and asked him if we would be interested in doing a summer camp at their location.

Well yeah...ya think?

The idea was to gather 20 kids, ranging from 3rd to 5th grade and teach them how a computer works.  We were going to use perfectly good computers, take them apart, teach the kids how to identify the components, teach them the function of said components, put it back together and then install Linux on it.

Given it would even start after said exercise.

I had my doubts.  I personally felt that this age range was a bit young.  I just didn't think kids this age would sit for 4 days and participate in this program...much less understand what they were doing.

I was wrong....

We brought in 10 identical Dell computers with monitors, mice and keyboards and set up the stations so there would be two kids to a computer.  We took a collective deep breath and opened the doors.  22 kids flooded in.

What I believed to be probable mayhem stopped well short and developed into this great experience.

We started the program with an introduction to computers in general.  There was a short question and answer period to make sure everyone was understanding what we were going to do...and then we began doing it.

I have to admit surprise from the beginning.  Not only did these kids grasp the understanding of the parts and components of a computer, they were eager to understand what they did and how they worked.

And sure, we covered the basics...RAM, Video cards and chipsets, optical devices and hard drives, but we found that our class was so eager to learn that we shifted gears and drilled deeper into the machines.

We began talking about IDE vs SATA, 20 pin vs 24 pin ribbon cables,Molex connectors, power supply detail...

They wanted it all.

 I don't know how many of you have worked in a "teaching" environment but I sure learned a few things during Camp HeliOS. 

Keep them engaged or they will venture ahead of you.

A few things surprised me here.  First off, this was a first-come first-served camp.  That means that all the kids voluntarily signed up for this camp.  The second thing that surprised me was the number of girls that signed up.

Now wait, I know that statement smacks of sexism but given the top-heavy male numbers in IT, one would think that there is little to no interest in technical stuff in the female population.  I don't know if our little camp was an anomaly, but I can tell you that the number of girls in this camp was just short of 50 percent.

Another thing that surprised us was that we had few if any dropouts during the 4 days.

I have to attribute that to the great volunteers we had during Camp HeliOS.  Sam Woods, a long-time friend of the Blog of helios and The HeliOS Project volunteered his time to come in and help instruct these future geeks.  Pastor Paul and Sam Pritchett from the church helped greatly...and both being geeks at heart, they helped instruct as opposed to simply keeping massive bundles of energy contained.


 John Decker took the bulk of photos used here as well as many others and I want to thank him personally for his work.

I also want to give special recognition to a student aide during Camp HeliOS.  Madeline not only did many of the preparation tasks to get things ready, she also helped greatly in assisting the camp kids with questions they had. Thank you Madeline...you were more help than you know.

The first three days were devoted to disassembly, reassembly and then Linux installs.  To be honest, we scheduled this as a 4 day event because we thought kids this young would need that much time to complete and absorb the camp.


Wrong.

We ended up using the 4th day just to explore games available on Linux...and  guess which one was the favorite.


World of Goo.


Thanks 2d boy for the licenses.

Oh, and take another guess.  Guess who mastered the game twice as fast as the others?

Yep...the girls.


Bottom photos:  Pastor Paul talks about the importance of a cpu and cooling fan and explains how a fan shroud helps.

Ken troubleshoots a faulty USB connection.

Skip does some one-on-one about RAM and how it works for temporary storage...I think he tried to sneak in the North Bridge chip into the conversation as well.



 All-Righty Then

Those closest to me know that I have a new...let's see, what is the politically correct noun...ah yes.

Significant.

I have a new Significant.

My Significant's name is Diane.

So girl friend, "GF", live-in...it's all the same.




We're under one roof and no one has been beaten, stabbed or shot as of yet.

So far so good.

So here I go trying to screw up a good thing.  We are a one computer household and dual-boot does not exist here.

We use Linux.

Now, Diane is well aware of the problems that Windows Users face.  She's been one of them for as long as she's been using a computer but once she sat in proximity to a Linux computer and someone who knew how to use it, that all changed.

Diane is retired from the Airline Industry.  She spent years in the Accounting and Purchasing Divisions of several airlines and companies so she's no stranger to spreadsheets and databases.  In the last part of her career she also used many on line applications to do her work.

So she is painfully aware of viruses and the nasties that come with the use of MS browsers.

And she is sick of them.

Diane now spends some of her free time doing contract work for a friend who is in real estate.   She takes on work to do postings through Smart Apartment Data and part of her duty is to post Chamber of Commerce-type pictures of apartment complexes.  To do that she must first download the pictures, organize them in folders on her computer then write corresponding text for each picture.

I mean it goes deeper than that but this is the part she has to do before she can do anything else.

In the past, she has used a Windows XP machine to get this done. She is painfully aware of how user-unfriendly Windows Explorer can be...especially when she is dealing with hundreds of pictures to be renamed, sorted and moved to different folders.

And yeah, there are third-party apps...but that only adds to the time and expense.

She used to dread getting a call for contract work.

Last week, we got the XP machine files transferred to the computer and I sat down with her to show her how the Linux file system works.

***hint...if you are in a troubled or stressed relationship, this might not be the time to do this....I'm just sayin...

For reference, I am running our version of Linux Mint (HeliOS) with a dual core AMD Opteron 1.7 gig processor overclocked to 2.5, Nvidia Graphics with the 185 driver, the PAE version of the latest kernel with 4 gigs of ram.

Sufficient for our needs I would say.

So I pull up a chair beside her and cracked open Nautilus to get to work.  For the sake of a new Linux User, I left the button navigation bar in tact just as a set of training wheels.  Visual location of the open folder has proven to help the learning process in my experience.



The Linux file system seems to be the intermediate stumbling block to many new Linux Users...not because it is difficult but because it is foreign to them.  It didn't take long for her to grasp the concept of "home folder" and those folders within.  She created the folders she needed via context menu or keyboard shortcuts and got to work.

It wasn't three minutes into her task that she laughed softly.

"I can't believe I struggled so hard to do this in Windows."

Of course, I had earlier added the "copy to" and "move to" scripts in Nautilus...I use them extensively but she used those or the drag and drop method, depending on her need.

It took her a grand total of five minutes to grasp and utilize the file system in Gnome.

Diane isn't "computer savvy" by any stretch of anyone's imagination.

Sure...I fully realize this can all be done simply from the command line...but it won't happen any time soon.

What...you trying to get me killed?

All-Righty Then

It sucks getting hacked or defaced on the web...especially when you haven't done anything to provoke it.

Who knows...the Blog of helios has contained content that's pi$$ed some people off...some of the projects I've involved myself in have evoked less than kind remarks and accusations.  Chances are though that what happened to us was due to a noted vulnerability and not any focused maliciousness.



In the unlikely event that it was a purposeful act, I don't have much to say to that person except:

I hope your toes fall off you ��({1n9  pr1({

OK...venting done.  Fact is, it took us less than a week to get the new site up and the old one needed fixed anyway...but I need to talk a bit about some of the things that happened in the background.  Many of you offered help in site construction and hosting and I sincerely apologize for not getting back to you individually.  I will do so shortly but it turns out that we've found a solution and that solution is now in place.

Welcome to the new HeliOS Project website.

The old site was a mess to be sure...it was too verbose, contained too many links to things that didn't pertain to our mission and was formatted poorly.  It wasn't that way until I started editing it...

Lessons learned.

I want to take this time to personally thank Mark Van Kingsley for his immediate and dedicated help in getting us back up and running.  Mark is a long-time friend of The HeliOS Project and a personal friend as well.  Mark attended the very first Linux Against Poverty event here in Austin and made the trip all the way from the Ithaca New York area on his own dime....

Actually it was a lot of dimes.  Thanks Mark...thanks for being there when it was needed.

We hope to find someone that will translate the entire site to Spanish so if you have that talent and the time, let me know and we will get to work on it.  A Spanish translation of our site would aid this community greatly.

At any rate, hopefully the drama is over and we can go about our business.  While I have you here, I will fill you in on a bit of what we will be doing this summer.

Aside from our normal install schedule for HeliOS Project Kids, we will be conducting two computer camps.  The first one will be held from the 20th to the 23rd of July at the United Methodist Church of Hutto Texas.  This camp will be for the younger kids, hopefully to spark their interest in hardware and software technology.  We're going to be taking apart perfectly good computers and identifying each component and their function then putting them back together again.  We will also be doing a fresh install of Linux on each machine.
Hopefully to achieve a still-working machine.  We'll see.
We are doing a carbon copy of this Computer Camp at the Bruno Knaapen Technology Learning Center in Austin from August 16th thru the 19th.  The kids attending here will be a bit older but we hope to achieve the same things.
Skip Guenter is taking personal vacation time to help with these camps so I want to thank him as well.  Skip does an inordinant amount of work for us and I am deeply grateful.

So...aside from installing computers and doing a couple of camps this summer we will be holding another Organization day to get our shop back into shape after the infusion of equipment from Linux Against Poverty

It needs it.

All-Righty Then

It was bound to happen...it happens hundreds of thousands of times a year...to hundreds of thousands of websites...

We were hacked.

Actually, that isn't exactly accurate.

We were script-kiddied.  As often happens some no-talent n'er-do-well gets an email that there is a vulnerability in a specific CMS and they do what they do best.  Unfortunately, all the files on the site are now gone too so many of the graphics and media links in this blog are now gone as well.  I still have many on redundant local backup here but still...

Sad.

It turns out to be a php vulnerability in the E-107 code and we've shut things down until we can get the site up again.  We have been talking about a complete revamp anyway so this would seem like a good time to get 'er done.

And we will.

Of course, 1and1 hosting service lived up to their less than worthless reputation by having their off-shore tech support tell me that there was no backup for our site and that she would look into the problem.  It has been suggested to me by others with the same experience that there is indeed a backup...no one wants to look for it or implement it.

Again, she said she'd look into the problem.

Uh...the problem nice Sir Lankan Lady is that you are fired.  To probably be replaced by nice Indian or Malaysian Lady...

Probably.

My thanks to Mark Van Kingsley for his help.  We should be back up by the end of the weekend.  My thanks to the great number of you who brought this to our attention.

Not that we hadn't noticed.

It's simply flattering that you did.

All-Righty Then

My personal and heart-felt thanks goes out to Lynn Bender of GeekAustin fame.  His organization of the Linux Against Poverty event this year was nothing short of phenomenal and on behalf of the Directors and Volunteers for The HeliOS Project, I thank you. - Ken

It was hot early.  this is, after all...Austin Tezas.

Last Saturday, Ron West arrived at the HeliOS Project shop out in Lakeway at 7:45 AM and after a short trip over to Lohman's Crossing to pick up our donated truck, we began loading the computers and equipment needed to get the day started.  It was going to be a long day.

That Saturday marked the second annual Linux Against Poverty.

By 11 AM, two dozen or so local geeks assembled in front of Union Park on West Sixth street, the bar that we were soon to turn into a large computer testing and repair shop.  By 11:30 we had close to 50 volunteers pitching in.  People took turns parking their cars and trucks out front to unload things they had brought and within 30 minutes, we had set up shop.

We had received about 30 computers prior to the event...we have several drop points around town and after some earlier news coverage, those shops filled up early...some with near-panicked calls to "come get this stuff", we're over-flowing."

While much of it was unusable or just simply junk, much of it was in great shape.  This is the equipment we unloaded at 11 AM to get things rolling.

Like last year, the Austin Techs that volunteered for LAP just got it done.  There was no drama or ego involved.  Teams Leaders had already developed their teams and everyone knew their part.  Roy Hall headed the Intake and Evaluation Team and they set up shop on the patio.  This is where the various machines were tagged,  triaged and inspected...their fate determined by a team that would send them to Repair, Install or.....Salvage.





Alex Thurlow led the salvage effort this year and his team did an outstanding job.  As we talked about during the run-up to Linux Against Poverty...we were extremely short of RAM.  We had just enough salvageable equipment to get the job done plus have some left over for HeliOS Project use during the year.  Sharp eyes and people who knew what they were doing allowed us to harvest parts others would have deemed unimportant and thrown away.  We are going to be able to use these components as opposed to filling a landfill somewhere.





The Repair Team was co-led by Andy Krell and Skip Guenter this year.  As I stated to Omar Gallaga, the Austin American Statesman Tech Reporter who covered the event, I am not only grateful for the volunteers that helped us this year, I am humbled.  The accumulated knowledge in the room that day was astounding.  I mean, we had CIO's and IT Directors working along side of us grunts.  When this happens, the whole community benefits from it and I want to thank everyone who made this thing work for us.
Don Davis led the Install Team effort this year and never complained that his team was relegated to the darkest corner of the facility.  His folks made sure that all the machines received the modified Linux Mint distro on all computers and that all were functioning before they were pre-staged for loading.  Don also provided most of the USB media we used to house the HeliOS distro for install.  Being able to install from USB not only saves time but in the long run, they last much longer than the normal CD or DVD.  Don's team did a fantastic job...and they never panicked when work stacked up on them.  They handled it like professionals they are. 

 I do want to take a minute and thank a couple of people specifically...people who went way above and beyond what was expected of them.

Skip Guenter is a Director for The HeliOS Project so one would expect him to put in a little extra effort but Skip passed "a little extra" sometime in early May.  Skip worked dozens of his own hours to get equipment running, computers operational and things organized for the technical side of the room.  I also want to thank Ron West for his dedication to what we do and the sweat equity he put into Linux Against Poverty.  What many people did not see was the pre-activities prior to LAP.


 Equipment had to be sorted, trucks needed to be loaded and bins had to be filled.  Ron not only got up before the sun on that Saturday to come help, it was him and I that got the truck loaded and more importantly unloaded after the event.  The facility was hot and we had to hand carry over 150 pieces of equipment to where it was to be stored.  Others had long since retired for the evening before Ron got in his own truck and headed home.  It was hard work indeed and I want to personally and publicly thank Ron for his contributions.  He busted his @$$.

So how did we do this year?  Well to be honest, not nearly as well as we expected.  Whether it be a down-turn in the economy or the fact that we are asking for some specific level of computers we just didn't get the response we needed to have enough machines to finish the year.  On the bright side, the equipment we did get is extremely good and the kids receiving these machines will benefit greatly from the generosity of both the Greater Austin Community and those who showed up at Union Park that Saturday.


There were many pictures taken that day but most of them have not been published to the web or sent to us for use.  Our further thanks to Kevin Guenter who took the photos shown here and to be displayed when the other photos are available.  It was indeed a great day.

You can see Austin's local News 8 coverage here

Thanks folks...thank you for helping us do what we do.

All-Righty Then

If I thought the last few days leading up to the 2009 event was hectic...

Well, maybe not being able to see the future is in itself a gift.

Preparation for an event this large and far-reaching is going to be a challenge...anyone going into it thinking otherwise is either delusional or....

Never mind...delusional will define it nicely.

For those who do not know, Linux Against Poverty is an event that couples the Austin Tech Community with businesses and individuals who donate computers to be given to disadvantaged kids in the area.  Our Tech Guys fix 'em and we give them away.  Last year we were donated just over 400 computers by business and individuals.  Of those 400+, 219 were refurbishable or met our specifications.  Those computers were passed to the HeliOS Project in August and by November, they were all in the homes of kids who needed them.

This year, as it was last year, Greg Bodle has graciously given us his Union Park bar on 6th street so the madness can ensue.  Well, the madness was last year.  We are hoping that lessons learned from the mayhem of 2009 will translate to a much smoother and efficient event.  This year we have organized actual teams ahead of time as opposed to people just arriving and jumping in where they were needed.  Our teams are broken down to Intake and Evaluation, Salvage and Parts, E-waste Management, Repair and then Install.  If you would like to see the google group we've designed to harness the chaos, you can visit it here.

Planning for this year's event hasn't been without it's challenges and frustrations.  Be it a flagging economy or a late run at publicity, we are critically short of some needed components and overall machine donations.  It may be that we are specifically asking for P4 or AMD 2200+ machines.

The older machines, while they will run Linux just fine do not build to the specs our kids need to compete.  We disposed of just under 50 percent of the machines donated last year because they weren't usable to us.  Many other organizations were able to use them but the cost of storing and transporting them is an expenditure we just cannot make this year.

Our requests for components such as DDR and DDR2 RAM have yet to be met.  We are also in need of LCD flat panel monitors and hard drives.  CRT's have become a financial and physical liability for both us and the kids that receive them.  Just one of these 80 lb monitors that get pulled over on a child will spell the end of The HeliOS Project.

We're not going to allow that to happen.  We came close once but a pro bono arbitrator was able to make the whole thing go away.  While the child was not injured, it was enough for us to quit the practice of delivering CRT's.

So, as always, when the greater Austin Community cannot or will not respond, we come here to let you know what our needs are.  That's not to say that some have not stepped up.  Our most sincere thanks go to Lionel Felix at Enfatico, the great people at Sicola Martin and Curt Hall at Genesis Today for their generous donations to Linux Against Poverty.  Just a small group of companies are making a huge difference in what we do.  Imagine if a dozen others just like them were aware of what we do.

If you work for a company or organization that might have the machines and components we need, please make them aware of what we are doing.  As always, any equipment donations are tax deductible. Many of our donations come after the event so please don't think it all ends on June 19th  We will gladly do pickups throughout the year. 

This year, Lynn Bender; the organizer of Linux Against Poverty has arranged for some pretty cool prizes to be raffled off to equipment donors.  First prize is a pass to next year's SXSW Interactive event.  Make sure you or your company registers for the drawing....

And thanks folks...thank you for being part of what we do.

All-Righty Then...



.

The idea or concept of the "Live CD" escapes most Windows Users.  I know it did me when I was new to all of this.  The fact that you can run an entire operating system on a contained CD without altering the hard drive data is far beyond most Windows users.  I've seen it enough times to know...

Now introduce the same concept via a USB stick and things get really interesting.

The dilemma I've faced in the past is that I knew I could make a workable and persistent USB-based device in Linux...there are a lot of tools available.  I simply assumed one had to be in the Linux environment to do so.


Silly me...Now who's the idiot making assumptions...?  I found the Windows apps on the pendrivelinux.com website that I "assumed" only wrote about Linux tools such as UNetbootin.

Sheesh...

There are two applications that I personally use and recommend for making a Linux distro USB device while in Windows.  For those that may not be familiar with them, here's the deal...

Linux Live USB Creator or "Lili" is a Windows app that allows you to make a persistent USB Linux distro.  Now I will admit that it's been a while but the appliciations that are available in Linux to do this task would fail better than half the time...problem is, they wouldn't fail until you had 30 minutes invested in the process.  It was frustrating to say the least.

Lili was a breeze to use in Windows.  The picture on the right shows 4 extremely simple steps to get the job done.  While it does only offer an option to work in FAT 32, I have yet to find this any slower than the sticks I've created in EXT3 or 4 in a Linux environment.

Lili has an advantage in that it allows you to choose a "persistent mode" and any software you install or changes you make within the entire system are saved for the next time you  boot the stick.  The downside, at least to me was the fact that the developers have to constantly build the app in order for it to work with the latest distros.  While it worked great within the rather inclusive list of distros mentioned, it failed to work with a custom distro we built from Linux Mint for The HeliOS Project.  Not a show-stopper...you can customize your distro any way you want and it will stay that way...As long as that distro is on the list.

The other Windows app I found to work great is the Universal USB Installer.  You can get this app from Pendrivelinux.com as well.  This app worked just as well for me but what I found most interesting is that while the developer(s) offer a list of working distros, two distros we built ourselves worked and installed perfectly even though they are not on the list.  I made 18 of these sticks in less than 2 hours in preparation for Linux Against Poverty on June 19th.

Some might wonder why we would write about creating a Linux USB stick in Windows but the fact is that if the only options are in Linux, then how is a Windows User going to see or understand it?

This is simply another tool in our box that can help us get those who are interested in Linux to investigate it further.  If they can create their own USB Linux Distro while in Windows, then the comfort level is far higher than if they had to work in an alien environment...chances are that would not happen anyway.

I thought I would take time to also mention a tool that will create a Linux image from ISO while in Windows.  Sure there are a bunch of them available but the one we found to work best for new users is called ISO Recorder.

It is simple enough to use even for the most basic user, however one drawback I've found is that there is no DVD support until Vista.  Since 80 percent of the Windows Users I know still use XP, that could be a problem.

So...if you would help me pass along these cool tools to your favorite Windows User, I'd appreciate it...OR post ones that you know of that work well. 

All-Righty Then

I've often made the statement that if the phone rings after midnight, it is rarely good news.  A phone call at 1:26 this morning proved out that point.  Martha Grimes of New Haven Connecticut called to inform me of the passing of her mother,  Ms. Alice Kensington.  Alice was and always will be a dear friend.  She taught me more about life in a few dear months than I had learned in a lifetime and I will miss her.  I will miss her to tears.


What follows is a story about Alice I wrote in 2006, published in the now-offline Lobby4Linux.com website.  I am reprinting this for those who may not have read it and to spend some personal time in remembering Alice.  Many of the provided links are in archive so they take a bit to load.  I've attempted to remove the ones that show "not available" and apologize for not supplying them here.

Aarrr me Maties, and what treasures has their spilled blood bestowed upon our scurvy husks?….aarrr.

No, I am not going to tell you her real name. She is a criminal now and I made her so. 86 years of lawful living, survived without so much as a speeding ticket. Her now-blemished essence is  the foulest of stain on my duplicitous hands. She hastily uses her internet connection to research South American countries and their extradition laws as they apply to the United States.

She has calculated the penalties and withdrawn substantial amounts of her retirement fund and hastily written goodbye letters to her children. At least the ones that aren’t yet dead. Two ex-husbands will grope for answers and friends will wonder for years.....

She must flee under the cover of night. Visions of swirling fog and Stoic good-byes… plane engines roaring in the background of the Casablanca airfield clutter her thoughts. No, she cannot afford melodramatic fantasies…she must plan, she must escape those worse than the Gestapo. Ruthless men, those who consider the KGB as pariah…it is these men that stalk her.

She does a final check of her belongings as she drags them to the door and then to the awaiting cab. Her frail frame is soaked as the rain falls through the blackest of nights. They must not capture her, no…it is not an option. She would rather die, have her heart stop in mid-beat before she would give herself over to them….she shudders as she dares even to think their name.

The RIAA.

One of the truly extraordinary experiences in my “career” as a Linux Advocate, has been donating my time to our senior citizens. In a nutshell, myself and two other volunteers visit Senior Citizen Assisted Living Centers and help them with their computer problems.

It was during one of these visits that I met “Alice.”

Alice is not your typical 86 year old Great Grandmother. Her demeanor is as salty as her language, and regardless of your age, those of thin skin do not fare well around her. It seems to me that she can sniff a “sensitive soul” out like a barn cat finds mice…I am beginning to think the mice fare much better. She has no patience with indecisive or soft-spoken people. I knew it was Alice immediately upon answering the phone. I answered it without checking the caller ID.

“Hello.”

“Yeah, you got the first part of it right, cause if you don’t help me fix this G* *** computer, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

I laughed and was sincerely glad to hear her voice. “Well, hello Alice, Just what have you broken now?”
Her laughter didn’t sound like an old woman’s.

“It’s not mine that's screwed up…It’s Betty’s and the G* *** CD won’t play.”

I thought quickly about the citizens at this particular center. Ah, THAT Betty…I remembered now. She was one of the only ones that would not let us put PCLinuxOS on her computer. She liked her Windows XP, and even had a legitimate copy of it. You don’t argue with someone that was welding rivets into a World War II bomber before you were born. You do as they ask. I reformatted her hard drive and did indeed reinstall Windows XP on her machine, as much as it chapped my backside.

I heard her voice through the cupped bottom half of her cell phone. “I said I would take care of it, just shut up and give me a chance to talk to the man.”

I could hear a further-muffled voice on the other end and it was Betty asking Alice something. “No, he’s not the fat one, he’s the bald one with the round glasses. You’re thinking of the air conditioning guy.” She uncupped the phone and spoke to me.

“God, if I get that simple when I’m old Kenny, just put one between my eyes, would you…and don’t miss, my luck, I would end up being a one-eyed obnoxious old lady. Now, are you coming over here to fix this computer?”

My schedule is fairly full, trying to raise funds for a trip to Washington DC and work two regular jobs. Still, telling Alice no is akin to kicking a grizzly bear in the butt. I cleared my throat and tried to inject an alternative choice.

“Tell me Alice, what is it doing…I mean, instead of playing the CD, what is it doing?”

“Betty, move your butt and let me in there.” I could visualize the transaction in space management taking place in the cramped workspace the residents had to call their “computing center.”

“OK, I’m putting the disk in…right now, and…..” She waited for the dialog box to appear on her screen. “Alright, up to now, it acts right, but watch this.” She spoke to me as if I were sitting next to her.

“Bam…there it is!”

“There is what Alice?”

“The friggin’ problem Kenny…here is the problem.” She was impatient with my inability to keep up with her. “It is telling me I am attempting to play the CD in an unauthorized media.”

I understood immediately. I sat down at my computer and pulled up Firefox. “Alice, do you have the CD case right there in front of you?”

“Well, yeah…where else would it be? You think she carries it around in a napkin?”

I laughed at her spontaneity. “No Alice, a ziplock bag maybe, but not a napkin.”

“So what’s the problem here? What’s so unauthorized about this media. And what is a media anyway. do they mean the computer?

I put her question aside for a moment to ask another. “Who is the artist on the CD Alice, who is singing.”

Alice answered without hesitation. “Kelly Clarkson, my daughter made this cd for Betty and when she came to visit last weekend she brought it with her so I could give it to Betty the next time I…”

“You mean it’s a home-made CD, it wasn’t bought out of a store?” I typed “Kelly Clarkson” and “label” in the searchbar and had my answer in the first hit.

“No you putz, I told you my daughter made it for Betty. You think my daughter works at the recording studio or something?”

I smiled again at Alice's' demeanor. I really wish you could meet her.

“OK, the “media” the message is talking about is your cd player in the computer…not the computer itself. See, Kelly Clarkson is contracted with RCA Records, which is a subsidiary of Sony-BMG…now I need you to pay attention here…”

I spent the next 10 minutes explaining to Alice about DRM and what it is doing to people who legitimately purchase music. It seems that the DRM’ed CD allowed itself to be “ripped” but when the copy of the CD was attempted to play in MP3 format, the DRM kicked in, and the “screw you” message, as Alice refers to it, appeared on the screen.

Alice listened without interupting. I could hear her scribbling furiously as I spoke but she never stopped me to repeat something or clarify a point. When I finished and was sure I had covered the entire issue, only then did she speak.

“And to think I voted for that ungrateful little b****.  If I knew where to find her, I’d rip those tight jeans off her and ram this disk up her…”

“No Alice…no…maybe I wasn’t clear. Many of the artists don’t like DRM on their recordings. They know it’s going to kill their sales eventually. It’s the RIAA and Microsoft who makes all the money off of DRM, not the artists.” I could again hear Alice’s pen scratching against the paper on the desk.

“So what do we do about this friggin’ disk? Are we just s***-out-of-luck Kenny?”

I thought for a long moment then told her that she had an alternative. Then It struck me as funny.

“I say something funny computer-boy?” The amusement in Alice’s voice was obvious.

“No Alice, you didn’t. It just occurred to me that I am going to tell you to use the means that DRM is supposed to stop.” And it is funny if you spend a moment thinking about it.

In the first place, I told her that the disk would play fine on a Linux System…that the DRM coding on the disk was made for Windows systems and that a Linux Machine would simply ignore the code that told it not to play. I went on to tell Alice about Frostwire and Shareaza. In short, I turned a 86 year old Marlboro-smoking, Chrysler Sebring Convertable-driving, Pinochole-playing, Maroon-Five listening Great Grandmother into a music pirate. An enthusiastic one at that. I should be ashamed of myself.

I’m not, but at least I have morals enough to know I should.

She had her unencumbered Kelly Clarkson music in less than 10 minutes.

This is where the story should end,but it doesn’t.

As I promised to do, I stopped by Alice’s apartment on my way home from work that weekend. She was so excited to see me, she couldn’t tell me things fast enough. I will spare you the dialog, it went something like this.

Alice knew from my warnings that downloading music via P2P was not only illegal, it was dangerous. I told her about the RIAA monitoring and the thousands of lawsuits the RIAA had initiated and won over the past two years. Alice had something for their asses. She sat me down at her computer and pulled up GTK-Gnutella…her seemingly favorite weapon of choice. She also showed me her installation of PeerGuardian. It was with great pride she demonstrated her knowledge of how to update the IP blockList and incorporate it into the program.

As amazed as I was, I hadn’t seen anything yet.

She opened konqueror and dropped down her Menu of Networked Folders.

I came close to falling out of my chair. Listed among the Local Network and Samba Shares were icons like “JakesJoint, TuxTurf, DayDreAmbeliever and NadKnocker. (don’t ask me what a “NadKnocker” is…I don’t wanna know.) Since every 8 apartments shared the same router, Alice had not only showed her new “partners in crime” how to use Frostwire, Shareaza and GTK-Gnutella…she had also formed “hubs” with the different router clusters for individual networks. I moused and clicked my way thru some of the offerings. I found one titled “If you don’t want to be disappointed in me, don’t look.” In all, 24 of the residents at this Center were now officially “Music Pirates.”

Addendum:  I have since learned that a child of one of the residents in the Senior Center assisted Alice in doing this...he may have done it all, but we'll never know now.

I was speechless. I remember the first day I came there and helped these poor souls with their busted-up Windows machines…and then I look and see what has evolved since then. I really should be ashamed of myself…I really should.

But I’m not…in fact, I think its a riot that the very thing DRM was supposed to curtail, it made flourish and flourish without consequence.

Go figure.

All-Righty Then...