Raspberry Pi Project: Jack the Ripper Bot

Do you still have a lot of DVD content that you would like to be able to archive in a cool, efficient, hands off way?

This project is technically objective.  It is up to the builder to ensure that the resulting bot is used to conduct legal archiving of content.

DVD content has been around for many, many years and many people have amassed many, many DVDs.  Even though disk changer carousels exist,  having a hundred plus DVDs ready to view on demand is practically impossible.  This is where archiving can solve the problem.

Open Internet

It is with trepidation that this article is posted.  Not for the message, rather for distinct possibility that it might come across as presumptuous or even condescending.  With all the conversations and articles and global meetings around net neutrality, and even more so often a lack of conversation about it, it begs to question whether people know how the internet was designed to operate.

Net neutrality is, for those who don't know, the ideology that no one entity or person should control or moderate the information that is transferred between two or more computers or electronic devices on the internet.  That all data should be treated equally.

This concept actually stems from a philosophical ideology that suggests that basic human rights should include unrestricted access to common knowledge and communication, for better or for worse.

Before the internet was first thought up and designed, even before ARPANET (which many point to as being the parent of the internet), there were networks and global packet switching which were co-joined and shared.

Tribal self determination

It does not matter who you are.  It does not matter where you are.  We are borne into societies with established and existing rules, laws, norms, behaviours, and everything else that determines our existence.

Yes, that sounds like an extreme, even negative statement.  Yet, it is reality.  If we are born in North America, there are certain rules we are immediately expected to follow.  North American culture is unique to North America, and we notice when someone comes from another country, even if they look the same as us.  We notice by their behaviours, their beliefs, their language, and perhaps even their understanding of right and wrong.

The old adage stands, "When in Rome, do as the Romans."  We are expected to conform and submit.  If we do not agree, then there are channels that we are directed to use to attempt to affect change.  And it is there, that we may begin to see our worlds change around us.

Open Money?

Money is something that is, for most, taken for granted.

On its public facing side, it is described, and accounted for, in a very simple way.  A good or a service is allocated some arbitrary value and in order to obtain that good or service, we submit that value in dollar (currency) notes of that value.

It goes by many different names: Dollar, Pound, Euro, Yen, Peso, Rubble, etc.  They all function the same way.  They are also interchangeable.  We can take our common currency and exchange it for another currency, in the event that we wish to make purchases in another country.

Making copies of existing, legal tender is illegal.  There are also many ways in which creating an alternative money can also be illegal.  But why would one want an alternative, or "open", money?