A Different View of Vista

Andrew Watson has done the maths for some of O’Reilly’s books for programmers:

* Windows Vista Annoyances: 704.
* Windows Vista Pocket Reference: 192
* Windows Vista in a Nutshell: 750.
* Linux Kernel in a Nutshell: 198.

That's 704 pages of Vista annoyances, a couple of months after launch: says it all, really.

Open Source at the Centre of the Middle Kingdom?

For those of us the wrong side of the bamboo curtain, it's often hard to tell exactly what's going on in the Middle Kingdom. So this extensive report about open source and intellectual monopoly issues in China is particularly welcome:

Open-source software is receiving a rapid uptake in key developing countries and users, local industries and governments say it offers them market opening, flexibility and lower costs. China, perhaps the biggest potential market, showed last week how much open-source is part of its plans.

The adoption of open-source software is also related to rising interest in open standards, which stems from emerging economies' effort to make global standards-making more favourable to them. Governments and technology companies say that a change in standards which involve underlying patents can mean monopoly markets for patent-holding companies, most of which are usually based in developed countries.

Ars Nova: The Art of Misrepresentation

A nice summary by Rob Weir of Microsoft's increasingly desperate campaign to undermine ODF in every way possible through artful and persistent misrepresentation of the facts. It begins with a real killer opening par:

Tim Anderson has an interesting article up on his ITWriting blog, "Microsoft’s Jean Paoli on the XML document debate". Of course, I treat anything Jean Paoli says on XML with such attention as I usually reserve for listening to the isorhythmic motets of Philippe de Vitry. Like de Vitry, Paoli can be understood on several different levels: What is he saying? And what is he really saying.

Open Source Hardware

One of the central beliefs at the heart of this blog is that open source ideas can be applied in many other, quite different, fields. But even though the concept of "open source hardware" is bandied around quite freely, it's not entirely clear how hardware can be open.

Try this for an explanation - with pix - which sensibly uses a layer model. (Via Slashdot.)

Making All the Right Connections

This is a tiny footnote to the larger story of the imminent IPRED2 vote, but I think in its own way it's a fine parable about the power of connected people, and of the larger connection that is the Internet.

Although I follow matters concerning European legislation affecting the digital world, and particularly those involving intellectual monopolies, pretty closely, I'd missed exactly when this IPRED2 stuff was about to break.

Luckily, I have a feed from the Open Rights Group, who ran this story warning us about the upcoming vote. As a result, I wrote first this post, and then this one, making pleas for people to write to their MEPs asking them to support amendments to the IPRED2 proposal, or to vote against it completely.

Nothing special in that, you might say. Except that Simon Phipps kindly mentioned me as one of his sources for a post on the subject, also urging people to write to their MEPs. And this, in its turn, was picked up by James Governor.

But the story does not end there. As James relates, within half-an-hour of firing off some emails, he had received a reply - a positive one too - and was impressed. I, too, am deeply impressed by the three replies I have received so far, two positive, and one effectively abstaining.

What this shows is the real power of blogs to get a message out, and to make a difference. More importantly, perhaps, it also shows that emailing MEPs does actually get a response, sometimes rapidly. I find both facts heartening; it gives me hope for the political process and for the possibility that technology can help ordinary citizens engage with it more directly.

That's Torn It

I'm terribly torn again.

This brilliant piece of cyber-conjecture sounds *so* exciting. But do I trust Google enough to put my entire digital life in its hands? And even if I trust Google, do I trust that nice Mr Bush and his warrants?

No, I thought not.

Google and Cultural Genocide

A suprising post from Cult of the Dead Cow about Google and its role in the cultural genocide of the Tibetans:

Ever since Google announced that it would deploy its emasculated server farms into Mainland China, the search giant's collaboration with Chinese censors has been widely criticized by the human rights community, free speech advocates, and the United States Congress. Although Google claims to have consulted with many nameless NGOs before deciding to export its censorship technology to China, it failed to take anyone's advice not to proceed. Google apparently knew better than its critics. Google even took the step of hiring someone from the Council on Foreign Relations to improve its public image with respect to corporate responsibility and geo-strategy. Regardless, Google's arguments for continuing to capitulate to Chinese demands are misplaced, self-serving, and uninformed. They are also a threat to Western security
interests.

Pity about that typeface. (Via Boing Boing.)

Second Life Gets Local Governance (a Bit)

One of the unresolved issues for virtual worlds is governance. If, as Second Life appears to do, there is a claim that this is a user-generated world, then it makes sense for users to run the place, too. Moreover, since users certainly pay a tax for the pleasure of living in Second Life, they should arguably have some form of representation. The first baby steps towards this have just been taken:

Many moons back, a portion of Linden’s Community Team developed a project meant to deliver better local Governance control to the grid. What does this mean? Many things. For starters: The Estate Level Abuse program which we’ve been Beta Testing since January. This was a test designed to allow estate owners to receive and resolve their own abuse reports in the method in which they best see fit. No longer subject to Linden’s ideas on how abuse could be handled, estate owners in the test had abuse reports filed on their land sent directly to their email.

IPRED2: Last Chance to Act

If you are a citizen of the European Union:

A coalition of groups representing librarians, consumers' and innovators have come together to support of a series of amendments that would fix the worst parts of the proposed Directive on Criminal Measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRED2).

If you live in the EU, contact your MEPs and ask them to support these amendments at the plenary vote in European Parliament on April 24-26, 2007.

Quick!

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.)