Hi, everyone. I know that you were expecting a post in the Building A Poll series, but I managed to somehow lose my entire post. I'll have to start from scratch and repost over the weekend.

Sorry to disappoint.

DD

This is the second, and more serious entry in my mini-holiday series "Things I am thankful for". Today I want to discuss why I am so thankful for Free software. Those of you who have been reading my stuff over the last couple of days may have noticed that I have this funny habit of capitalizing the F in free. This is not a habitual typo. It is in fact, intentional and instructive.

In the Free Software Movement, there is a differentiation between free software and Free software. The latter is often referred to as Free/Libre Software. The former costs nothing, but comes with other, hidden costs. There are many sources of free, proprietary software. The flash player from Adobe and iTunes are two obvious examples of free software. You can download this software for no cost, but it is still proprietary. If you'd like to read a detailed analysis of the iTunes license, read this. Here's the short version - you aren't allowed to do anything that Apple doesn't want you to do. You may not look at the source code or understand how iTunes operates. So, although iTunes is does not cost anything, it comes with many restrictions. Download.com is a great place to find  some of this software. I am not trying to say that this is bad software. In fact, much of it is actually very high quality. But, you need to remember the hidden costs and restrictions that come with using this kind of software.

In contrast, we can choose to use Free software. This is software that is developed in an open-transparent manner. We all have the right to see the source code and participate in the development of the end product. We can re-use the good ideas, and we can create our own custom version of a product that better suits our needs. These are Freedoms that no proprietary product will ever offer you. And, I am thankful for these Freedoms.

Fortunately, there are also lots of places to find Free software. Head over to Sourceforge, one of the Internet's largest repositories for Free software. Look around. There are literally THOUSANDS of software titles to choose from. Text editors, databases, video games. Free software is about choices AND Freedom. I'm thankful for both the choices and the Freedom, but today I really want to focus on the Freedom part.

Richard Stallman, one of the early pioneers of the Free Software movement, defined the Four Freedoms of Free software. For you history/political buffs, this is a clever fork of FDR's famous Four Freedoms.  Stallman's Four Freedoms famously start on 0 and increment to 3. Very geeky. But, this is the guy who developed Emacs, the greatest text editor/operating system in the world.

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

I want you to look at these four freedoms. I want you to look at them carefully. Now compare them to the End User Lices Agreements you agreed to when you installed ANY proprietary product. You and I both know you can't re-distribute copies of Microsoft Office or SPSS. We also know it is impossible to fundamentally alter the way these programs operate, even if it is just to improve the tool. SPSS is a great example. Even though it is a statistics tool, information detailing the algorhythms it uses. Proprietary software is developed in secret and lacks the transparency that is inherent in any healthy Free software product.

Free software is a game changer in the IT industry. This should be no less true in the political realm. I promise you that the software you will see promoted on overdetermined.net is Free software not free software. The products we promote will be Free software. The code we develop is available under a Free license too. In the coming weeks I will try to write up some information about various Free software licenses and how these may be relevant to your use of the software, but for the moment let it suffice to say that the stuff we promote is Free as in Freedom/Libre.

Of course, all this software does cost real resources to develop. It takes man-power and it takes time and resources. So, although we will promote the cost of Free software, I want us to all promise to focus on the Freedom this software offers us too. And, if your campaign or organization has a little cash left over and wants to support the continued development of Free software, consider donating to the Free Software Foundation or purchase a service contract from a company such as Canonical or Red Hat. The not-for-profits that develop this software and the companies that bundle it are vital to the continued development of the Linux ecosystem. I know the economy is in a tail-spin, but let's make sure we all have something to be thankful for.

Unitl next time . . . .

--pluribus

It is officially the holiday season. Black Friday is right around the corner, and I have every intention of gaining 10 pounds this weekend. But, before we descend into obtuse gluttony, I want to take a moment and talk about the things I am thankful for this holiday season.

Sometime tomorrow or this weekend, I am going to publish a piece outlining why I am thankful for Richard Stallman and all the folks over at the Free Software Foundation. Without their pioneering efforts, we would not have access to Free software. I truly believe that Free and open-source software is as American as apple pie. But, I'll talk about that more in a future installment.

In the meantime, I would also like to say that I am also incredibly greatful for this little piece of news, courtesy of the Huffington Post. Knowing that Anne Coulter's mouth is wired shut will make my Holidays a little more peaceful and relaxing. My only regret: not being able to see Anne with chipmunk cheeks.

Oh well. Maybe next year.

--pluribus

more animals

more music charts

E Pluribus Unum
Out of Many, One
    --Official Seal of the United States

I am pleased to introduce a new ongoing column here at overdetermined.net focused on the R Project for Statistical Computing (I'll just call it R). R is an interactive programming environment, based on the same high-level "language" the commercial product S-Plus uses. Many of you are probably familiar with tools such as SPSS or Stata. Although these are nice tools; they are expensive, proprietary products. A base copy of SPSS costs nearly $7000, and that does not include an operator! The open source community can provide your campaign or organization (and the competition) with a full suite of enterprise-grade tools for $0.00. How many bumper stickers and t-shirts can you print with an extra $7000? For smaller campaigns and not-for profits, purchasing proprietary software (of any sort) is simply not a good use of funds when there are free software packages capable of doing the same work. I look forward to introducing you to a few of these tools.

We will start slowly, and build on what we learn. Starting next week I will begin a series titled: "Introduction to R". We will learn how to install R and use it to perform very basic tasks. Future series will build on these skills. Although R is an interactive programming environment, I do not expect you to have any programming experience. When necessary, I will provide a primer on important topics or skills that are relevant to the task at hand. All you need to do is follow the examples and try out the homework which I will present as a sort of puzzler from time to time. Extra credit to those who get the right answer!

Although most of my efforts here at overdetermined.net will focus on R, my interests are wide ranging and often geeky. I will introduce you to other interesting sources for statistical data and show you how to use R (or other open-source tools) to learn something interesting about our nation. I also enjoy debunking "sophisticated" efforts to use statistics to support completely non-sensical policy positions. Mark Twain was right, statistics are often used to tell the worst sort of lies. It is my professional obligation to club those individuals over the head with a good dose of reality. And, I must warn the ideologically blindered that I can be quite non-partisan in my drubbings when provoked!

I'm glad to be here and I look forward to getting to know all of you better in the future.

Until we meet again . . .
--pluribus

Hi, everyone. I'd like to take a second to introduce you to our new contributor, Pluribus.  We are pretty lucky to get a guy with his experience and talents. He's worked as a data consultant for state governments and NGO's, he's done pretty interesting programming stuff, and he's going to be writing a pretty kickass series on programming some of the various things that we discuss on here using an open sourced statistics environment called R.  I'm really looking forward to seeing what kinds of tools he can bring to the environment.

Admin

In the last part of the Voter File tutorial, we loaded the Adams County, Ohio file into SQL.  It should now be ready to use.  But first, we need to go through some basic quality control on the file, which I'll show you how to do below the jump.

Hat-Tip to the guys at RedState.

This is the kind of toy that could entertain me for days. It's a map of America, with red and blue pieces for each state!  Everyone should buy one now.

DD

Right at the top of this post, I'd like to take a step back and thank you, our readers, for continuing to stay with us as we evolve and come up with new ideas.  What began with Blue Leader and me ranting about our experiences working in data and analytics is slowly growing into a strong, six person team of people with diverse points of view, ideas and approaches to solving problems. And as we move forward and develop our ideas, we look back at other things that we tried and realize that we may have to tinker with the ideas a bit.

This is one of those moments.