Wikipedia in Google Earth

As I've mentioned before, mashups are all about the underlying mesh. And what better mesh for knowledge than Google Earth? And what better to mash it with Wikipedia? Here you are, then. (Via Openpedia.org.)

Larry's Unbreakable Kite

What do you want if you are worth $18 billion and have the third-largest motor yacht in the world? Simple: revenge.

Oracle's Unbreakable Linux is about revenge - for the fact that Red Hat dared to snatch JBoss from under Larry Ellison's nose. It's a warning that you don't mess with lovely Larry. It's also a bit of kite-flying: maybe offering support for Red Hat is a viable business, though I can't see it myself. In any case, even if Unbreakable fails as a service, it's already succeeded as a punishment.

Update: Ha!

IBM Gets Open Source Religion - Seriously

A post on Bob Sutor's blog points to IBM's mega-site devoted to open source. Interesting enough, but even more interesting his comment on it:

It’s hard to think of any part of IBM’s business that is not now affected by open source

One of the first, but certainly not the last.

Learning about OpenLearn

I wrote some while back about the Open University's plans to offer its materials as open courseware. Its dedicated site, called OpenLearn, is now up and running, with lots of interesting content. The licence? - a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Mixed news on the UK patent front:

The Court of Appeal has ruled on two cases involving software patents today. It rejected one and unfortunately granted the other. It was hoped that the ruling would confirm that software development which relates only to new business logic does not have to worry about patent threats. As more and more companies in the United States get tied up in business method patent litigation, this decision should be a big worry for UK companies.

Full details here.

Viral Evolution

As a big fan of the explanatory power of Darwinian evolution - which, for those still concerned about its "theoretical" status, is basically just maths - I have to say I'm impressed by this story:

SpamThru takes the game to a new level, actually using an anti-virus engine against potential rivals.

Of course, this is precisely the same strategy that baby cuckoos use. Self-standing, evolving computer viruses living across the Net are getting ever closer....

DRM'ing It into People

One of the central problems with DRM is that it is hard to know how to fight back. Boycotting DRM'ed goods is all very well, but needs lots of people taking part to make an impact. This means that getting out the fact that many consumer products are Defective by Design is crucially important. Against this background, here's a clever idea: tagging DRM'ed products on Amazon. Fight force with cunning. (Via Boing Boing.)

Peer-Reviewed Wikis Are Like Buses...

...you wait for ages and then two come along at once.

First we had Citizendium, now here's Scholarpedia. The dynamics are slightly different, and it will be fascinating to watch their respective evolution. In particular, it will be great to see online Darwinism in action as these two and Wikipedia fight it out from their respective positions.

(Partial) Digital Freedom

Although this Digital Freedom Campaign is highly partial - in both sense of the word - in that it's totally US-centric as far as I can tell, the groups supporting it seem to be right ones. Whether its dinky Flash videos (grrr) make a fig of difference to what is, after all, a global problem, remains to be seen. (Via Open Access News.)

The Oracle Speaks

Oracle's announcement of its "unbreakable" GNU/Linux has provoked plenty of comment from around the blogosphere. I've not had a chance to mull it all over yet (not least because I've been up at the LinuxWorld show, where I spent some time talking to a man from Oracle....). In the meantime, you can find plenty of interesting analysis via Technorati.

Firefox 3.0, Firefox 4.0

Firefox 2.0 is so 2006....

NOC, NOC: Who's There?

To my eternal shame the UK is not exactly at the forefront of free software adoption, not least because Our Glorious Tone seems as dazzled by the business and intellectual achievements of Bill Gates as he is by the social and political ones of George W. Bush. But apparently we are to get our very own National Open Centre. I'm not holding my breath for massive open source uptake, but it's a start.

Bruce Schneier, the Man from BT???

Say it ain't true, Bruce:

Britain's BT Group has snapped up United States-based Counterpane Internet Security for a sum of more than $20 million as part of a continuing commitment to the security offering and overall growth of its Global Services business.

Counterpane provides managed network security services.

As part of the deal, Counterpane's founder, CTO and highly regarded security guru, Bruce Schneier, will join the BT payroll. Schneier will maintain his position as CTO within Counterpane, based in Mountain View, Calif.

Bruce Schneier, security god, meets BT, ex-monopolistic monster.

Ah, well, I suppose you deserve the dosh, if nothing else.

Harnad on Open Access and Open Source

The high priest of open access, Steve Harnard, has some thoughts on how open access and open source relate to each other - and how they don't. He also uses this analogy:

I am personally in favour of open-code pharmacology ("OP"): The formula for potential cures should not be kept secret, or prevented from being used to sell or even give away the medicine.

It does *not* follow from this, however, that if a commercial pharmaceutical company develops a non-OP cure for AIDS today that I will refuse to use it or promote it! Nor will I try to suppress or refuse to cooperate with OP research or OP researchers, while there are still diseases and patients, needing to be cured now.

The reason this is different from the situation with open source is that for the latter you (as in an idealised "you") always have the option of sitting down and writing some free code. You do not really have this possibility when it comes to inventing drugs.

Turkish and Pakistani Delight

It's all-too easy to forget that free software is a truly global phenomenon. So these stories, one from Turkey, the other from Pakistan, are a timely reminder of how much is happening beyond the glare of the anglophone media.

Both are about the public sector being encouraged to turn towards open source software. Both have interesting sites associated with them. In Turkey, there is the home-grown Pardus distribution, while in Pakistan there is an information site called FOSSFP: The Free and Open Source Software Movement.

Open Biology Meets Open Source Meets Open Access

Talking of titles, this one sounds pretty germane: Source Code for Biology and Medicine. Here's some more information:

Source Code for Biology and Medicine is a peer-reviewed open access, online journal that publishes articles on source code employed over a wide range of applications in biology and medicine. The aim of the journal is to publish source code for distribution and use in the public domain in order to advance biological and medical research. Through this dissemination, it may be possible to shorten the time required for solving certain computational problems for which there is limited source code availability or resources.

(Via nodalpoint.org.)

International Journal of the Commons

What a fab name for a journal. The sponsoring body

IASC is an association devoted to understanding and improving institutions for the management of environmental resources that are (or could be) held or used collectively. Many will refer to such resources and their systems of usage as "commons".

Given the subject-matter, it will come as no surprise that the new title will be adding to the commons that is open content. (Via Open Access News.)

Star(Office) Burst

Here's an interesting little Google map, showing where StarOffice is being used in academic institutions in Italy. OK, so it's a little recondite, but the point is there's a lot of StarOffice about. And as we know from Apple's history, if you get them young, you get them old.... (Via Erwin's StarOffice Tango.)

G8 vs. WIPO?

Here's a tiny little straw in the intellectual monopoly wind:

During their next meeting the G8 governments should engage those of the five newly industrialized countries the People's Republic of China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico in talks about intellectual property, representatives of the German federal government elucidating the proposed agenda for the next G8 summit meeting in June said during a briefing while commenting on the latter's motto "Growth and Responsibility."

And why is that interesting? Well, because

Oliver Moldenhauer of Netzwerk Freies Wissen [Free Knowledge Network] told heise online that he thought the G8 summit was not the proper forum for discussing intellectual property rights. "The G8 are made up almost exclusively of rich industrial countries. The interest they have in this dialogue is likely to consist above all in putting pressure on the newly industrialized ones," he said. In the opinion of Mr. Moldenhauer other forums such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the World Health Organization (WHO) are better suited to the task.

And why has G8 suddenly gone off its darling WIPO? Well,

the industrialized countries suffered a setback at the WIPO General Assembly in September. The newly industrialized countries had countered calls for further harmonization by demanding that such harmonization go hand in hand with, for example, improvements in the quality of the process by which patents are granted and effective protection of traditional knowledge against possibly unfair exploitation by international companies.

Hm, maybe I need to change my views on WIPO....

Real Life: The Review

Talking of RL and SL, this extremely witty piece is deeper than you might think:

Volumes have already been written about real life, the most accessible and most widely accepted massively multiplayer online role-playing game to date. Featuring believable characters, plenty of lasting appeal, and a lot of challenge and variety, real life is absolutely recommendable to those who've grown weary of all the cookie-cutter games that have tried to emulate its popularity--or to just about anyone, really.

(Via Web 2.0 Blog Network.)

Unreal Mashups

This is getting seriously weird.

DestroyTV lets RLers watch an island in SL, using an embedded video camera (which is "in" both SL and RL). There are also screenshots (several thousand of them), over on Flickr, complete with a tag cloud. So which world are we in now?