Thanks, Tony - But No Thanks

I received an email from Tony Blair yesterday. Not that this was so special, since he also sent it to the other 28,000 people who had signed an e-petition calling for ID cards to be scrapped. You can read the missive here (and if you're feeling really left out, you can copy it into an email to yourself and pretend that it came from our Tone).

What's particularly galling is that this email essentially says "thanks for your request, but get lost", and then goes on to repeat all the tired old misinformation about the ID card scheme's cost, its efficacy against terrorism and how it will reduce identity theft. Although I could pick some of its arguments apart, I'd rather leave it to the master himself, The Reg's John Lettice:

The National Identity Register will allow police to add the entire adult population of the UK to their suspect list, giving them the opportunity to check fingerprints left at scenes of crime against those collected from ID card and passport applicants, says Tony Blair. Nor are fingerprints in other EU countries necessarily safe - the introduction of biometric technology, he adds, will "improve the flow of information between countries on the identity of offenders.

Blair made the pledge to collar the lot of us, and some, as part of a rag-bag of warmed-over, half-baked, misleading, and just plain untrue claims issued in an email to the near-28,000 signatories of the Downing Street petition calling for the scrapping of the ID card scheme.

Damn DRM

The FT has little votette underway:

Should music companies drop DRM?

Steve Jobs, Apple’s charismatic chief executive, has proposed that record companies drop their insistence that music sold over the web be protected by digital rights management technology. DRM is designed to combat piracy but limits the ways consumers can use music they have purchased.

You may want to join in (no registration required)....

Godless Commies Choose Godless Commie OS

Given the number of times free software has been mischaracterised as communist, this seems rather appropriate:

Cuba's communist government is trying to shake off the yoke of at least one capitalist empire _ Microsoft Corp. _ by joining with socialist Venezuela in converting its computers to open-source software.

Both governments say they are trying to wean state agencies from Microsoft's proprietary Windows to the open-source Linux operating system, which is developed by a global community of programmers who freely share their code.

"It's basically a problem of technological sovereignty, a problem of ideology," said Hector Rodriguez, who oversees a Cuban university department of 1,000 students dedicated to developing open-source programs.

In Praise of the Open Singularity

There's a characteristically thoughtful post over on Open the Future called "Open Source Terraforming" (great title). But even better, perhaps, is a link to the original post that gave the blog its name. How's this for a peroration?

The greatest danger we face comes not from a singularity itself, but from those who wish us to be impotent at its arrival, those who wish to keep its power for themselves, and those who would hide its secrets from the public. Those who see the possibility of a revolutionary future of abundance and freedom are right, as are those who fear the possibility of catastrophe and extinction. But where they are both wrong is in believing that the future is out of our hands, and should be kept out of our hands. We need an open singularity, one that we can all be a part of. That kind of future is within our reach; we need to take hold of it now.

Dell 2.0

Like most readers of this blog, I spend so much time leading a Web 2.0 existence, that I am often surprised, as I emerge blinking into the sunlight, that the Real World is still resolutely 1.0. So the news that Dell is starting to get it with the launch of its (horribly-named) Dell IdeaStorm is a welcome sign that that parts of the world are upgrading:

The name is a take-off on the word “brainstorm” and it is our way of building an online community that brings all of us closer to the creative side of technology by allowing you to share ideas and interact with other customers and Dell experts. You can suggest new products or services you’d like to see Dell develop or tell the world how you feel about major trends in technology and society. We hope this site fosters a candid and robust conversation about your ideas.

Of course, candid conversations have to be two-way, Mikey, so it will be interesting to see whether you live up to your side of the bargain. In particular, the top three suggestions - no extra installed software, and pre-installed GNU/Linux distros - are all very easy to implement if the will is there.

It seems very open: I just went there and clicked on a few stories without any kind of registration required. This obviously leaves it open to abuse, but with luck the sheer volume of genuine users will swamp and attempt to game the system. (Via TechCrunch.)

Update 1: There are now nigh on 50,000 votes for the GNU/Linux option...let's hope Mikey is listening.

Update 2: May be things are moving:

While "I can't speak specifically to Linux," Pearson said, "I can assure you it is getting full attention."

Jim Gray

This doesn't look good. Very sad. He was a real pleasure to interview.

Why Ballmer Will Go

See? It's not just me:

Stop Him Before He Speaks Again!

....

Just keep him quiet! Should we expect another mea-culpa in the inbox?

Him being Steve "The Flying Chair" Ballmer. Do read the rest of the post for further insight into the state of the good ship Microsoft.

EU on OA: A Big, Fat Nullity

The open access world has been waiting with bated breath for an important EU document on the subject, in which a Europe-wide policy would be delineated - obviously with potentially huge impact. It's here, and it's 100% mealy-mouthed:

Access to, dissemination of, and preservation of scientific information are major challenges of the digital age. Success in each of these areas is of key importance for European information society and research policies. Different stakeholders in these fields have differing views on how to move towards improvements for access, dissemination and preservation.

Within this transition process from a print world to a digital world, the Commission will contribute to the debate among stakeholders and policy makers by encouraging experiments with new models that may improve access to and dissemination of scientific information, and by supporting the linkage of existing preservation initiatives at European level.

The Commission invites the European Parliament and Council to debate the relevant issues on the basis of the present Communication.

Oh yeah, right, thanks for nothing.

Everyone Loves Second Life

Well, not quite, but that's the impression you get reading the comments on this post, an unprecedented outpouring of gratitude. It's not hard to see why:

Since September concurrency rates have tripled, to a peak last week of over 34,000. While we love that so many people are enjoying Second Life, there have been some challenging moments in keeping up with the growth, resulting in the now somewhat infamous message “heavy load on the database”. When this happens it usually means that the demand for transmission of data between servers is outstripping the ability of the network to support it.

When the Grid is under stress, resulting in content loss and a generally poor experience, we would like to have an option less disruptive than bringing the whole Grid down. So we’ve developed a contingency plan to manage log-ins to the Grid when, in our judgment, the risk of content loss begins to outweigh the value of higher concurrency. Looking at the concurrency levels, it’s clear heaviest use is on the weekends.

When you open your log-in screen and see in the upper right hand corner Grid Status: Restricted, you’ll know that only those Second Life Residents who have transacted with Linden Lab either by being a premium account holder, owning land, or purchasing currency on the LindeX, will be able to log-in. Residents who are in Second Life when this occurs will only be affected if they log-out and want to return before the grid returns to normal status.

This is precisely what many SL residents have been calling for - some preferential treatment for those that pay.

Of course, it's in part an admission that SL isn't scaling too well, but equally I doubt if anybody ever expected the kind of growth that has been seen in the last few months. Unlike some, I don't see this as the end of the SL dream; the open sourcing of the viewer, and the confirmation that the server code would also be released were signs that Linden Lab knows that drastic measures are required to move into the next phase. Philip Rosedale and Cory Ondrejka, the two main brains behind the world and its code, are clever chaps, and I don't think they underestimate the magnitude of the task facing them. It will be interesting to see how these occasional lock-outs affect the influx of newbies and the general perception of SL.

Snap Snipped

In my never-ending quest to keep you lot happy, I've modified the Snap options on this page. First, in the top right-hand corner you should find the option to switch Snap on in the first place. If you don't want it, don't click on it.

Second, I've opted not to trigger Snap with mouse over links, but only over the Snap bubble that follows them for external sites. Finally, if you want to get rid of Snap having tried it out, click on the bubble, then choose the Options menu from the Snap bubble to cancel Snap for this site.

Hope this helps.

Enthusiast Evangelist for MS? How Sad is That?

After working as an industry analyst for more than decade, I’m leaving JupiterResearch to join Microsoft as an enthusiast evangelist. What is an enthusiast evangelist? Our job is to find, engage and work with enthusiasts and other influencers and show them all the cool stuff that Microsoft is doing.

Right.

Whether it’s work, school or home, Microsoft has the potential to change lives even more than they already have.

What, in terms of compounding the damage done by overpriced and unstable collections of security holes masquerading as operating systems by trying to lock it all down with Draconian DRM?

Why am I doing this? My current job is great, my boss is wonderful and I was compensated OK.

I see. (Via TechCrunch.)

Microsoft's Freudian Slips

I just love it when Microsoft feels moved to write one of its open (sic) letters. They are essentially corporate Freudian slips writ large, because they expose the real hopes and fears of the company, far from the more controlled environment of conventional PR. The trick to understanding them is to realise that they always mean the opposite of what they say.

So the latest missive, entitled "Interoperability, Choice and Open XML" is actually about lock-in, lack of choice and closed XML. To save you ploughing through all the MS prose, here's the key sentence:

This campaign to stop even the consideration of Open XML in ISO/IEC JTC1 is a blatant attempt to use the standards process to limit choice in the marketplace for ulterior commercial motives – and without regard for the negative impact on consumer choice and technological innovation.

Note the clever way that settling on one standard - rather like HTML, TCP/IP and the rest - suddenly becomes a way of "limiting choice". What Microsoft glides over, of course, is that the choice is within the standard. There are now a number of programs supporting ODF, with more coming through. That's choice. I doubt whether there will ever be a non-Microsoft program that supports fully its own XML format: there will be no choice, just lock-in under a different name.

The Mozilla Manifesto

It's either a sign of a growing maturity - or of great hubris - that the Mozilla Foundation under the guidance of the Chief Lizard Wrangler herself, Mitch Baker, feels moved to offer the world the Mozilla Manifesto:

The Manifesto sets out a vision of the Internet as a piece of infrastructure that is open, accessible and enriches the lives of individual human beings. It includes a pledge from the Mozilla Foundation about taking action in support of the principles of the Mozilla Manifesto. It extends an invitation to others to join us, either by working directly with the Foundation or through other activities that support the Mozilla Manifesto.

It adheres to the following principles:

1. The Internet is an integral part of modern life - a key component in education, communication, collaboration, business, entertainment and society as a whole.

2. The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.

3. The Internet should enrich the lives of individual human beings.

4. Individuals' security on the Internet is fundamental and cannot be treated as optional.

5. Individuals must have the ability to shape their own experiences on the Internet.

6. The effectiveness of the Internet as a public resource depends upon interoperability (protocols, data formats, content), innovation and decentralized participation worldwide.

7. Free and open source software promotes the development of the Internet as a public resource.

8. Transparent community-based processes promote participation, accountability, and trust.

9. Commercial involvement in the development of the Internet brings many benefits; a balance between commercial goals and public benefit is critical.

10. Magnifying the public benefit aspects of the Internet is an important goal, worthy of time, attention and commitment.

I get the feeling that the lizard will continue to surprise in all sorts of ways in the years to come.

Sinning Against the Holy God of American IP

Even for the field of intellectual monopolies, which is strewn with examples of hypocrisy and bullying, this "301 report" from the International Intellectual Property Alliance in the US really takes the biscuit. Here's what Michael Geist, one of the world's leading legal scholars has to say of its truly paranoid listing of most countries of the world for their transgressions against the holy god of American IP:

each invariably criticized for not adopting the DMCA, not extending the term of copyright, not throwing enough people in jail, or creating too many exceptions to support education and other societal goals. In fact, the majority of the world's population finds itself on the list, with 23 of the world's 30 most populous countries targeted for criticism (the exceptions are Germany, Ethiopia, Iran, France, the UK, Congo, and Myanmar).

The U.S. approach is quite clearly one of "do what I say, not what I do" (fair use is good for the U.S., but no one else), advising country after country that it does not meet international TPM [Trusted Platform Module] standards (perhaps it is the U.S. that is not meeting emerging international standards), and criticizing national attempts to improve education or culture through exceptions or funding programs. Moreover, it is very clear that the U.S. lobby groups are never satisfied as even those countries that have ratified the WIPO treaties or entered into detailed free trade agreements with the U.S. that include IP provisions still find themselves criticized for not doing enough.

I'm really quite ashamed that the UK isn't on the list, too: the fault of Tony "the poodle" Blair, I suppose.

Free Cultural Works vs. Open Content

Now I wonder where they got the idea for this:

This document defines "Free Cultural Works" as works or expressions which can be freely studied, applied, copied and/or modified, by anyone, for any purpose. It also describes certain permissible restrictions that respect or protect these essential freedoms. The definition distinguishes between free works, and free licenses which can be used to legally protect the status of a free work. The definition itself is not a license; it is a tool to determine whether a work or license should be considered "free."

Here's a further hint:

We discourage you to use other terms to identify Free Cultural Works which do not convey a clear definition of freedom, such as "Open Content" and "Open Access." These terms are often used to refer to content which is available under "less restrictive" terms than those of existing copyright laws, or even for works that are just "available on the Web".

Now, who do we know that prefers the word "free" to "open"?

ODF 1.1 : True Accessibility

News that version 1.1 of the ODF standard has been approved by OASIS is hardly earth-shattering, but I thought this comment in the press release was significant:

OpenDocument 1.1 supports users who have low or no vision or who suffer from cognitive impairments. The standard not only provides short alternative descriptive text for document elements such as hyperlinks, drawing objects and image map hot spots, it also offers lengthy descriptions for the same objects should additional help be needed.

"We are thrilled with the progress to date," said Curtis Chong, president of the National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science. "Our views have changed over time. OpenDocument is no longer a thing to be feared, as we once thought. The OASIS process exemplifies what should be done if true accessibility to both a document format and the tools to manipulate it are to be achieved."

This address issues about ODF's accessibility for some users - something raised in certain quarters when trying to de-rail ODF's adoption by Massachusetts. Cross another "problem" off the list, please.

Open Solutions Alliance

Another day, another open source organisation:

The Open Solutions Alliance consists of leading companies dedicated to making enterprise-class open source software solutions work together. We help customers put open source solutions to work by enabling application integration, certifying quality solutions, and promoting cooperation among open source developers. Membership is open to organizations that provide high-quality, business-ready open source solutions.

More specifically, it consists of companies like CentricCRM (customer relations management), Hyperic (systems management), JasperSoft (business intelligence) and OpenBravo (enterprise resource management), as well as more general open source players like CollabNet and SpikeSource.

What's striking about these is that together they form pretty much a complete open source enterprise stack of the kind I wrote about half a year ago. This is something we're going to see much more of, as individual open source companies start banding together to present a common front in order to satisfy the demands of large companies who want integrated, working solutions, not a ragtag bunch of codebases.

OOo: Just Look at that Stat

I quite often flag up big wins for OpenOffice.org, but it can be hard to get the big picture from these small pieces. That makes this wiki page particularly useful, since it pulls together all of the high-profile OOo projects, together with number of desktops involved, and links to original sources. Very handy. (Via Erwin Tenhumberg.)

Patently Foolish

Oh, here's a good idea: let patent experts help decide whether or not to grant lots more patents. And if you need proof this is not going to be good for us, take a quick at gander who's endorsing the move:

The Business Software Alliance, whose members include Apple, Microsoft, Intel and IBM, was quick to hail the bill's approval.

Information Always Outlives Technology

Nice to see Sun's boss-man getting it about both open standards and ODF:

Imagine you're a legislator that writes a law, or a doctor that drafts a patient's record, or a student that writes a novel. And that five years or fifty years from now, you want to return to review your documents. Except the vendor that created the application used to draft those documents, the company that created the word processor, has either gone out of business, or decided to charge you $10,000 for a version capable of reading old file formats. Either scenario makes the point: Information always outlives technology.

As I've said elsewhere, I really think that the ODF bandwagon is chugging away unstoppably now, and that 2007 will be the year not of the GNU/Linux desktop, but of OpenOffice.org on the desktop. Schwartz's post is further evidence of that.

Open Source Jahrbuch 2006: Ja, Bitte

Although there's plenty written about free software and open source, there's relatively little in the form of books that try to offer a synoptic view. This makes the annual Open Source Jahrbuch, particularly valuable. As for 2004 and 2005, this year's is freely available as a PDF.

As you might expect, it is planned with a Germanic thoroughness, weighing in at 500 pages. As well as big names like Eben Moglen and Larry Lessig, it has a host of less well-known writers, who nonetheless have interesting things to say. I particularly liked the details of the famous Munich LiMux project, and the corresponding project in Vienna, WIENUX. Also good is the article on open source community building, which analyses several smaller projects.

I was pleased to see plenty of space given to both open content and open access. As readers of this blog have heard ad nauseam, there exists an important commonality between these opens, and it's gratifying to see open source's younger siblings getting some recognition here.

All-in-all, I'd go so far as to say that this is the best book on open source that has been published in the few years or so. Taken together, the whole series of Yearbooks form perhaps the most important collection of writings on open source and related areas to be found in any language.

Novartis Does Open Genomics

It's happening, slowly:

Novartis, the Basel, Switzerland, drug giant, has helped uncover which of the 20,000 genes identified by the Human Genome Project are likely to be associated with diabetes. But rather than hoard this information, as drug firms have traditionally done, it is making it available for free on the World Wide Web.

"It will take the entire world to interpret these data," says Novartis research head Mark Fishman. "We figure we will benefit more by having a lot of companies look at these data than by holding it secret."

The data and more information is available from the Diabetics Genetics Initiative site at the Broad Institute. (Via Slashdot.)

Why Virtual Worlds Will Explode (Metaphorically)

This is spot-on:

The kids who have pushed MySpace to the limit are looking for the next cool place to hang out on the Internet, and they’re finding it in easy-entry 3D virtual worlds like Tyra’s. I haven’t been in yet since I just got home and wanted to get the news up, but Glitchy tells me the place is packed. Why? Because it does the one thing Web pages can’t: It provides “presence,” the ability to interact in three dimensions with the people around you. (The ability to change your outfit on the fly ain’t bad, either.) It’s a richer mode of communication than chat, email or IM, and the generation that already takes those mediums for granted want more. 3D worlds give them that. It’s not a quirk of technology, it’s a cultural shift in the way we interact and communicate with each other.

Problems We Don't Have: Tag Clouds in Chinese

You think you have problems with Web 2.0? Be grateful for small mercies:

Tag cloud displays tags in a website which emphasize some of the tags by showing them with larger font sizes, and/or in darker colors. Moreover, tags in a tag cloud are usually arranged in alphabetical order. Tag cloud seems to work in the English world as a means of visualization as well as an extra means of navigation - what about in the Chinese world or more specifically, what about in Hong Kong?

(Via Virtual China.)

Now We Are Five: HTML5, XHTML5

Anything that talks about HTML5 and XHTML5 gets my attention pretty quickly. I don't pretend to understand all the implications of this, but it sounds cool:

This specification introduces features to HTML and the DOM that ease the authoring of Web-based applications. Additions include the context menus, a direct-mode graphics canvas, inline popup windows, and server-sent events.

...


The scope of this specification is not to describe an entire operating system. In particular, hardware configuration software, image manipulation tools, and applications that users would be expected to use with high-end workstations on a daily basis are out of scope. In terms of applications, this specification is targetted specifically at applications that would be expected to be used by users on an occasional basis, or regularly but from disparate locations, with low CPU requirements. For instance online purchasing systems, searching systems, games (especially multiplayer online games), public telephone books or address books, communications software (e-mail clients, instant messaging clients, discussion software), document editing software, etc.

I can't wait. (Via Vecosys.)