Citizendium Update

Larry Sanger's Citizendium project was an interesting experiment in forking Wikipedia, which has now evolved into something else. Here's his full update on where it stands, together with a nice polemic on the "new politics of knowledge."

The Supreme Blog?

Who knew that there was a blog about the US Supreme Court? And it seems that there are some interesting things happening there in the field of patents:

the Supreme Court has taken three patent cases just this Term, the most in modern history (at least to my recollection). In an era when the Court's docket has been steadily declining, as I have highlighted in previous posts, what do you think explains the Supreme Court's sudden interest in patent cases, an area over which it has no special subject matter expertise? One obvious explanation is that the Court is trying to rein in what it might view as a rogue Federal Circuit, but I believe that there might be something more there.

(Via Against Monopoly.)

BeThere? I'd Rather BeSquare

I've sometimes been vaguely tempted by BeThere's promises of "up to 24 Meg download" speeds. No more, if this is how it treats someone pointing out a serious vulnerability in its operations:

A 21-year-old college student in London had his internet service terminated and was threatened with legal action after publishing details of a critical vulnerability that can compromise the security of the ISP's subscribers.

BeThere took the retaliatory action four weeks after subscriber Sid Karunaratne demonstrated how the ISP's broadband routers can be remotely accessed by anyone curious enough to look for several poorly concealed backdoors. The hack makes it trivial to telnet into a modem and sniff users' VPN credentials, modify DNS settings and carry out other nefarious acts.

Here's a simple explanation: if someone exploits your vulnerability, they are crackers and deserve punishing; if someone points out your vulnerability so you can fix it and protect yourself, they are hackers and deserve rewarding. (Via TechDirt.)

The Blog is the New Resume

Pretty much . (Via ContentBlogger.)

Google Web History: Fantastically...What?

This looks really cool:

Web History: All the web sites you visit, at your fingertips.

* View your web activity.
* Search the full text of pages you've visited.
* Get personalized search results and more.

But frankly, I'm far too frightened to install it. The idea of not just giving all this data to Google (based in the US, remember, with that nice Mr. Bush in charge), but authorising it to track my every move online....Nein Danke. (Via Vecosys.)

Open Scientific Communication

Not exactly the snappiest name for a blog (they probably wanted to use something witty like "opendotdotdot", but it was taken). Nonetheless the eponymous blog is welcome:

This blog was set up by members of the Euroscience working group on Open Access chaired by Hélène Bosc. Euroscience is a grass-roots organisation open to research professionals, science administrators, policy-makers, teachers, PhD students, post-docs, engineers, industrialists, and in general to any citizen interested in science and technology and its links with society. It represents European scientists of all disciplines (including social sciences and the humanities), in the public sector, universities, research institutes as well as business and industry.

This blogs covers subjects that are wider than just open access to scientific papers, ranging from open acces archiving to open licensing and terms of use.

I do wonder about that domain name, though.... (Via Open Access News.)

Thunderbird 2

There was always something rather exciting about Thunderbird 2 that the other Thunderbirds were unable to match. Perhaps it was that interchangeable pod thing, which fitted inside inside the outer frame, that lent it an extensibility and thus unpredictability the others lacked.

Anyway, Thunderbird 2 (Mozilla's email program) has landed and is very cool.

Feisty Fawn Goes to Java (or Vice Versa)

Simon Phipps writes:

The news is that a full Java developer stack with tools is available from today in the Multiverse repository for Ubuntu 7.04 (that's Feisty Fawn). It includes JDK 5 and 6, the Glassfish Java EE server, the NetBeans development environment and the Java DB database. From today, Ubuntu becomes a first-class Java developer platform (just like Solaris Express already is). That also makes deployment easy - having Glassfish or Java DB as a dependency becomes almost trivial.

Not One God: No God

A strange post here from the usually perceptive James Governor:

One of my current hobby horses is that we the industry needs to move beyond good vs evil, manichaen black vs white, beyond the single answer to a problem. Our monoetheism does us no favours. A more polytheistic sense, of using the right tools for the job, and being in mastery, bringing a more distributed spirituality into our technology saturated lives. And document formats seems an obvious place for that kind of thinking. One true format? What do we need that for and what god are we worshipping? What are the problems we’re trying to solve?

Well, how about breaking lock-in in the Office market? How about trying to create a level playing-field so there are lots of solutions - not just one, as now (that's monotheism)? How about creating a truly open standard that is not controlled by one company, and that can grow according to the needs and desires of users?

And saying, well, let's have two standards, doesn't cut it for purely pragmatic reasons. Unless Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop is broken, it will continue; unless ODF becomes the single, global, open standard, Microsoft's pretend open standards will continue to exert their vice-like grip on the market, sustained through sheer inertia from a time when there was no alternative. Now there is.

ODF in itself is nothing special, except that it is truly open, and backed now by enough users and companies to be viable. Its main function is to create the conditions for competition and network effects to kick in. It is not so much a god that has to be worshipped, as a landscape in which things can be built.

Not one god, not two gods, but no gods.

Intellectual Monopoly Enforcement Directive

Doesn't sound so good like that, does it? Perhaps that's why they dress it up as the Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive, which sounds so much cosier. But the fact is, bad things are about to happen in Europe on this front:

IPRED2 – the EU’s second intellectual property enforcement directive – is going to the vote at the EU Parliament next week. If it passes in its current form, “aiding, abetting, or inciting” copyright infringement on a “commercial scale” in the EU will become a crime. What’s more, it will be the first time the EU will force countries to impose minimal criminal sanctions – this is normally left up to the discretion of member states.

If you're a citizen of the European Union - and remember, that includes all you Romanians, Bulgarians out there, too - please write to your MEP and point out how bad this legislation as currently drafted it (contact UK MEPs here). Aside from bolstering intellectual monopolies, it will also threaten free software development.

Microsoft Embraces (Nearly) Free Software

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is using a speech in Beijing to unveil a new low-cost bundle of Office and Windows, one of several new initiatives aimed at getting PCs into the hands of more people in emerging markets.

The software maker will offer the $3 Student Innovation Suite to governments that agree to directly purchase PCs for students to use in their schoolwork and at home.

I've always been surprised Microsoft hasn't done this before, since it was fighting a losing battle against completely free software in developing countries. But aside from its competitive aspect, there's one that interests me more.

Microsoft is gradually reducing the perceived price of its software to zero. Apart from the difficulties this will cause it in those markets where it is still charging hundreds of dollars, it also means that the move to open sourcing its code, and literally giving it away, comes one step closer. It'll happen, mark my words.

Microsoft's Men in Black

"It was like the movie 'Men in Black,'" says Rep. Homan. "Three Microsoft lobbyists, all wearing black suits."

Another lobbyist (unaffiliated with Microsoft) who would speak only "on background" laughed at the "Men in Black" description. "I know those guys," he said. "They even wear sunglasses like in that movie. They are the 'Men in Black' of Florida lobbying, for sure."

A legislative staff employee who would lose his job if he were quoted here by name said, "By the time those lobbyists were done talking, it sounded like ODF (Open Document Format, the free and open format used by OpenOffice.org and other free software) was proprietary and the Microsoft format was the open and free one."

Two other legislative employees (who must also remain anonymous) told Linux.com that the Microsoft lobbyists implied that elected representatives who voted against Microsoft's interests might have a little more trouble raising campaign funds than they would if they helped the IT giant achieve its Florida goals.

Amusing as this might seem, it's pretty serious, if true - and there's no reason to disbelieve it. Moreover, I think it will come back to bite Microsoft. This is not the way a corporation should act - and a further sign that Microsoft is deeply worried.

ODF: The Croation Domino Falls

Probably.

GapingVoid, or Gaping Void?

This, at first sight, is just sad. But maybe it's actually interesting: to see whether someone who apparently got it, and now clearly doesn't get it, does finally get it.

Open Source Demand Generation

Is there nothing that free software can't do?:

LoopFuse is the enterprise-grade open source alternative to demand generation, offering marketing and sales organizations the ability to generate leads from their website, lead nurturing capabilities, and full CRM integration with most major vendors. LoopFuse also offers the capability to measure ROI within marketing and sales department initiatives.

Because LoopFuse is built on best-of-breed open source technologies, scalability and reliability are assured. Leveraging the open source community also allows us to have much lower costs than our competitors and faster-paced innovation, which our customers and partners ultimately benefit from.

OECD on UCC

That's user-created content to you. A big, rather dry, but useful report on said. (Via Michael Geist.)

The Tragedy of the Bumblebee Commons

We don't often think of bumblebees as forming a commons, but there's a clear tragedy caused by selfish exploitation going on here:

Several UK bumblebee species are heading inexorably for extinction, scientists have claimed, part of a process caused by "pesticides and agricultural intensification" which could have a "devastating knock-on effect on agriculture".

Not so much flight of the bumblebee as plight of the bumblebee.

McNealy Calls for Merger of ODF and UOF

Readers of this blog may recall mentions of the third document format, China's UOF (click on UOF tag below for more on the subject). Well, here's an interesting idea from Sun's Scott McNealy: merge UOF with ODF.

Europe Against Software Patents

See, it's not just me. (Via Against Monopoly).

Flash: Now With Improved Evilness

I've always said that Flash was turning the Internet into television, and now here's the final proof I was right:

But the big seller for Adobe is the ability to include in Flash movies so-called digital rights management (DRM) - allowing copyright holders to require the viewing of adverts, or restrict copying.

"Adobe has created the first way for media companies to release video content, secure in the knowledge that advertising goes with it," James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research said.

Content publishers are promised "better ways to deliver, monetize, brand, track and protect video content".

Interesting, of course, that no benefits for the user are mentioned here.

Pure evil.

Fotowoooooooosh

I. Am. Gobsmacked. (Via Techcrunch.)

Open Web Initiative

What is Open Web?

Open Web is a collection of technologies and standards that enable individuals to disclose their identity, feeds, activities, friends, and social networks, while preserving their ownership over this information and enabling them to keep their privacy.

What is NOT Open Web?

Anything that is proprietary, locked in in format or provider is NOT Open Web. Open Web is about open, extensible, and license free standards.

In short this is a collection of technologies and open standards that enable individuals to disclose their identity, feeds, activities, friends, and social networks, while preserving their ownership over this information and enabling them to keep their privacy.

Sounds good to me. (Via Vecosys.)

Microsoft Sees the (Silver)Light

I suppose I ought to approve of Microsoft's new Silverlight:

Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web.

In other words a Flash-killer. Well, maybe not, but at least it might nudge Adobe into opening up their technology. And how about this for progress:

Silverlight will support all major browsers on both Mac OS X and on Windows. Particular care is being taken to account for differences in platform and browser capabilities to ensure a consistent experience including experiences on FireFox, Safari, and Internet Explorer.

OK, it's not quite GNU/Linux support, but Firefox at least seems to have made an impression.

This is the Way the World (of Copyright) Ends...

...not with a bang, but a whimper:

YouTube may be best known for showing video clips from its users of hamsters’ pratfalls or attempts to don as many T-shirts as possible. Starting today, it will also become an easy way to view content from Al Jazeera English, the English-language version of the Qatar-based television news station.

Now, some may not be happy with Al Jazeera's viewpoint (me, I like diversity), but here's a strange thing. Points of view that run counter to Al Jazeera's are likely to be thin on the ground online. Why? Because those that produce them will use copyright law to pursue anyone posting them to YouTube.

Could this be the straw that breaks the camel's back, as the US Government realises that its blind support of copyright maximalism places the US viewpoint at a disadvantage globally?

No, I suppose not.

Funk That Macaque

Since I let my Science subscription lapse some time ago (not enough hours in the day, alas), it didn't occur to me that the recently-published Macaque genome might be available online. But in a nod to open access, Science has put together a special online collection around the subject.

The Macaque is important because it's only the third primate genome to be sequenced - the other two being the chimpanzee and humans. Its sequencing will allow all kinds of genomic triangulation to be performed to work who did what first in terms of genes and suchlike. It's also important because it represents at least one more such primate that we've managed to sequence before driving to extinction (hello gorilla, goodbye gorilla....)