Open University Opens Up Some More

Some nice cc'd courses from the kind people at the Open University. (Via The Inquirer.)

Amazon Goes DRM-free - And So Do We (Almost)

This is big news:

Amazon.com today announced it will launch a digital music store later this year offering millions of songs in the DRM-free MP3 format from more than 12,000 record labels. EMI Music's digital catalog is the latest addition to the store. Every song and album in the Amazon.com digital music store will be available exclusively in the MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) software.

It's important not so much because of the songs that will be freed in this way, as for the huge publicity it gives to the idea of being DRM-free. Until now, few end-users have really understood what the implications of DRM were; but once big names like Amazon start pushing the virtues of DRM-free stuff, then people will naturally demand it from other outlets - and from other labels alongside the enlightened EMI.

We're nearly there, people. (Via PaidContent.)

Hugging Hugg.com

Although the site itself is nothing special, its name is sheer genius. (Via GigaOM.)

The Same Old Song

Sigh, the usual idiocies:

UK copyright laws should be extended to prevent musicians from missing out on royalties in later life, MPs have said.

I hate to break this to you chaps, but royalties are there to encourage the creation of new songs, not reward you for ones you have already written.

The killer, though, is the following:

"Given the strength and importance of the creative industries in the UK, it seems extraordinary that the protection of intellectual property rights should be weaker here than in many other countries whose creative industries are less successful," the report said.

Well, you know, maybe it's precisely because the term is shorter here that people have more incentive to write new songs. Extend the term, and they have less incentive to compose, leading to less creativity. Simple, really, when you understand that copyright is a quid pro quo, not a gold-plated pension for ageing rockers.

Fighting Climate Change with Open Data

Here's an interesting idea on several levels:

the Zerofootprint platform, powered by Business Objects, provides urban dwellers the ability to view their “environmental footprint” – the effect their daily habits have on pollution levels and the strain they place on our natural resources.

Enter accessible data — such as miles driven each year, miles flown, kilowatt hours used, location of home and office — and you can easily calculate your effects on the earth. The calculator measures not only the amount of carbon dioxide emitted (the carbon footprint) but also the use of resources such as land, trees and water. Once an individual's impact has been calculated, the Zerofootprint tool provides information on how to reduce it, measuring the results.

I think this makes an important point: if you can't measure something - in this case environmental impact - then you can't manage it. Providing direct feedback to people on the consequences of their day-to-day choices seems a sensible way to engage them in fighting climate change and the destruction of the environmental commons.

Interestingly, there's another level:

Much of the data gathered will be stored on the Insight database — and then the real work begins.

The challenge, or challenges, will not stop with the creation of a database. As soon as a representative sample size is available, business analysts and number crunchers everywhere can roll up their sleeves to use the information in meaningful ways.

For instance, imagine a visualization comparing the carbon footprint per kilowatt hour of electricity used in Paris versus Shanghai.

“When we are able to analyze and visualize this data, that is bound to suggest a myriad of solutions,” says Ron Dembo, founder of Zerofootprint, whose mission is nothing less than to change the world by helping people reduce their environmental footprint. “The database created here will be the ‘creative commons’ for building models for many different opportunities.”

Again, this is hardly a novel insight, but it is an important idea. Aggregation of open data in this way provides a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. What's striking is that both this and the idea of providing some kind of feedback lie at the heart of open source and related open endeavours. Modularisation means that people can work on small elements that together contribute to a larger whole; and the feedback they get for their efforts - typically peer esteem - is what keeps them going.
(Via Ars Technica.)

Copyright Done Right(er)

Meanwhile, back in the real world:

The Government has proposed a change to the damages available under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, ruling out the possibility of the award of punitive damages in civil cases of copyright infringement.

...

The Government has long considered punitive damages more appropriate to criminal law. "[The] aim of civil law should be to provide compensation for loss, not to punish the defendant," said the paper.

Amazing. Kudos to the UK Government. (Via Michael Geist.)

Deranged Millennium Copyright Act

If you thought the DMCA was bad, take a look at this:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pressing the U.S. Congress to enact a sweeping intellectual property bill that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including "attempts" to commit piracy.

The best bit, though, is the following:

* Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software. Anyone using counterfeit products who "recklessly causes or attempts to cause death" can be imprisoned for life. During a conference call, Justice Department officials gave the example of a hospital using pirated software instead of paying for it.

This would be funny if it weren't so sad: life imprisonment for using "pirated" software? What planet are they on? But I like to look on the bright side: in the face of this utterly deranged legislation, I think a lot of people are going to start looking rather favourable on free software....

A Ray of Sunshine

Here's a fascinating post about software patents from Greg Papadopoulos, Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development at Sun. He has lots of surprisingly sensible things to say on the subject (i.e., he more or less agrees with me), together with the following comment that offered a truly fresh take on the subject (not something that happens often):

Patents are a far more blunt instrument than copyright, and tend to teach far less than code. I just don't know of any developer who reads patents to understand some new software pattern or idea. Remember, the limited monopoly we grant a patent holder is in exchange for teaching others how to do it so that when the patent expires everyone is better off (the length of time of the grant is another issue. How long is two decades in software generations?)

Of course! This is the real test of a patent: if it doesn't teach anything to people who ought to be hungry for knowledge it reveals, it's almost certainly trivial or obvious.

Brilliant, Greg. (Via Erwin Tenhumberg.)

Business Credibility in a Box

Ha!

Small businesses know they must seem successful to become successful. So they play Thriving Office while they're on the phone. This valuable CD is filled with the sounds people expect to hear from an established company, providing instant credibility. It's fast, easy and effective!

Thriving Office contains two 39-minute tracks: “Busy” and “Very Busy”. Both are filled with the sounds of voices, phones, computers, drawers and more.

(Via TechCrunch.)

Hold the Front Page - Or Maybe Not

The hot news, of course, is Microsoft's threat to sue the entire open source ecosystem. Or maybe not. As Techdirt rightly points out, this is not a threat, but actually just re-heated FUD. But even more, it's a final wake-up call: we need to get software patents sorted out before they sort out free software.

A Flash of Recognition

Now, where have I heard this before?

I assert that there is something wrong with web-like "rich" formats that aren't hyperlink-able or indexable by search-engines. You could argue that these bugs could be fixed, and Flash is wisely becoming more URI-addressable and view-source-able over time. But it still ain't the Web. It is not hand-authored, easily tweaked incrementally, copy-and-paste-able. It's hardware.

Oh, yes, I remember:

I hate Flash animations even more: they are not only opaque - there is no cyber-there there - they are barriers to my free navigation of the Web and waste my time as they download. In effect, they turn the Web into television.

Well, television is, indeed, hardware.

All 'K? KDE 4 Alpha is Out

KDE justs keeps on getting better and better, and is pretty much the de facto open source desktop these days. Now we have KDE 4 - well, an alpha release, at least - and it looks pretty cool.

Taking the DMCA Biscuit

This is almost Jesuitical in its contorted logic:

Media Rights Technologies and BlueBeat.com have issued cease and desist letters to both companies and to Adobe Systems Inc and Real Networks -- which produce the Adobe Flash Player and Real Player respectively -- for actively avoiding their X1 SeCure Recording Control, which they said is an effective copyright protection system.

MRT and Bluebeat said the failure to use an available copyright protection solution contravenes the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits the manufacture of any product or technology designed to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work or protects the rights of copyright owners.

How do they come up with this stuff?

Identifying ID Card Flaws

As costs for the hare-brained UK ID Card continue to spiral out of control, the LSE has put together a timely submission to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee inquiry into “A surveillance society?” that picks apart the current scheme's weaknesses.

Park at My LAMP Server

Up to the London OpenCoffee meeting yesterday (well, with a name like that, how could I resist?), where I met Anthony Eskinazi. He's the MD of the self-explanatory ParkAtMyHouse.com:

We are a brand new and innovative service which aims to provide affordable and penalty-free parking around public venues by enabling property-owners to rent out their empty driveways, garages, car parks and other spare pieces of land to drivers needing somewhere to park.

Motorists and cyclists on their way to work, a big sports match or a hospital appointment for example, can arrange to use a property-owner’s space on a one-off or regular, short-term or long-term basis.

What I love about this idea - aside from its blindingly obvious nature, always a good sign - is the way it uses technology to make economic and social activity more granular, and hence more flexible and efficient. It also has a green angle, thanks to this tie-up with Zipcars.

Not surprisingly, one reason why Eskinazi was able to turn this idea into reality with minimal resources is because he's built his site (personally) on a LAMP stack. He also mentioned how much he owes to the content management software Joomla, which he says is both easy to use and yet extremely powerful.

A Theory of Modularity

I've mentioned a few times how important modularity is to the efficiency of openness. This seems pretty obvious, intuitively, but it's nice to know that some academics have produced a rather nice, rigorous demonstration of why this should be the case for software:

Important software modularity principles, such as the information hiding criterion, have remained informal. DSM modeling and Baldwin and Clark’s design rule theory have the potential to formally account for how design rules create options in the form of independent modules and enable independent substitution.

This paper evaluated the applicability of the model and theory to real-world large-scale software designs by studying the evolution of two complex software platforms through the lens of DSMs and design rule theory. The results showed that (1) DSM models can precisely capture key characteristics of software architecture by revealing independent modules, design rules, and the parts of a system that are not well modularized; (2) design rule theory can formally explain why some software systems are more adaptable, and how a modularization activity, such as refactoring, conveys strategic advantages to a company.

Er, quite. (Via Michael Tiemann.)

The True Cost of Intellectual Monopoly Infringement

Not as big as some would have us believe:

International trade losses due to product counterfeiting and piracy are much lower than estimated by business lobby groups, according to the most detailed global study to date.

...

The report, due for endorsement by the OECD board later this month, could prove embarrassing for international business lobbies, which have used the higher estimates to lift intellectual property rights up the global political agenda and to demand crackdowns in China and elsewhere.

(Via Michael Geist's Blog.)

OpenSourceCinema.org

Here's a meme that pops up now and again, an open source film. But this one comes with a twist - it uses a wiki for the script:

This is the script for the film. I'm laying out everything I plan to do or hope to do.

This film is not finished - this film will never be finished [that's what we've been saying for 4 years!]. This writing is not meant to be perfect - instead it is meant to be dynamic. I am not editing myself as I write. I am being open. I'm like a bird, I'll only fly away.

I'm begging for help! Any page in this wikifilm can be edited. If you want to add something you think should be filmed, or that you have filmed, STEP UP! Wise man once say about this site: MORE BOOTY SHAKIN', LESS COUCH POTATIN'!

If thoust thinks the wording can be improved upon or otherwise ameliorated, then thoust must act to change at once!

Every page, except this one, can be edited. (Why? Because this page generates the Table of Contents).

We will create a feature documentary from this wiki. It will play in theaters and on TV. Everyone who contributes will get a credit. So choose your handle wisely.

Below are the chapters of the film as I see them. Please - comment, change, act, create. Changing is not breaking - changing is evolving. Structure is dissolving. Music is revolving.

Ode to an OA Hero

Open access is only just beginning to creep into public consciousness, so it is hardly suprising that the OA pioneers - the people that have done all the donkey work and made it happen - are almost totally unknown. So it is good to see this very detailed profile of Matthew Cockerill, one such OA hero.

He's (the) publisher at BioMed Central, which is part of the Vitek Tracz empire. Amusingly, I had lunch with Tracz some years ago, but got not an inkling of what he was up to, which is a pity given my current interest in his work. Whether that was his fault (he was communicative, but not in a very helpful way) or mine (I was insufficiently inquisitive), is hard to say: probably both.

Maybe It's Because I'm a Dot-Ldn-er

Yes: as the world's most exciting city - think Swinging Sixties goes digital (Networked Naughties?) - London absolutely has to have its own top-level domain, and to hell with the logic:

Supporters of the campaign for London to be the first ever city to have its own internet domain name are invited to voice their support to Nominet, the UK’s internet registry.

...

Lesley Cowley, Nominet’s chief executive, says the correct extension could be either a second level domain in the .uk space, such as ldn.uk, or a top level domain such as .ldn.

(Via Vecosys.)

OpenJDK

Free!

Insights into the Hacker Worldview

From David Miller, one of the most senior kernel hackers, comes this little story:

Say you've been doing nothing for the past few weeks except looking for a real nasty and hard to trigger bug. You think you're getting close and the one piece of debugging information is just around the corner, perheps the next build or the one after that will spit out the debugging message you need to find the bug. All the rest of your work is being blocked by this problem, you have to fix it.

You've been drinking coffee all day, and guzzling water as well.

So now you have to go REALLY BAD, you're about to pee your pants. What do you do? Do you go to the toilet and take care of things or you cross your legs as hard as humanly possible thinking "just one more build, just one more" for the next half hour?

If you're one of the ones who would go to the toilet you're not a programmer.

Learning from the Encyclopedia of Life

One of the great trends online is to pool data to create a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. The Encyclopedia of Life is one example, but on a splendidly ambitious scale:

an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Our goal is to create a constantly evolving encyclopedia that lives on the Internet, with contributions from scientists and amateurs alike. To transform the science of biology, and inspire a new generation of scientists, by aggregating all known data about every living species. And ultimately, to increase our collective understanding of life on Earth, and safeguard the richest possible spectrum of biodiversity.

Highly laudable, not least the last part. But I can't help feeling that something has gone wrong in the realisation of this grand project.

The opening page of the website is a huge image that takes a while to load even with a decent broadband connection, and which conveys absolutely nothing (it's a nice picture taken from space of the Earth from mesopotamia to poor oppressed Tibet: and?). The home page has a video on it (why?), and all the demo pages are PDFs (er, isn't this supposed to be a website - you know, groovy HTML stuff?). slow to load, presumably because they are over-coded.

All-in-all, then, a superb idea, but one that clearly needs a lot of tweaking - to say nothing of slimming down - if it is to be really useful.

13 AE 01 56 46 3C 13 30 2E 9E CA 2B 13 30 FE 14

No, it's not that number, it's my number:

First, we generate a fresh pseudorandom integer, just for you. Then we use your integer to encrypt a copyrighted haiku, thereby transforming your integer into a circumvention device capable of decrypting the haiku without your permission. We then give you all of our rights to decrypt the haiku using your integer. The DMCA does the rest.

The haiku is copyright 2007 by Edward W. Felten:

We own integers,
Says AACS LA.
You can own one too.

Here is your very own 128-bit integer, which we hereby deed to you:

13 AE 01 56 46 3C 13 30 2E 9E CA 2B 13 30 FE 14

Ubuntu Uber Alles

Can Ubuntu do no wrong? First Dell, now this:

To fulfil the aims of our mission and in response to the technical challenges that these devices pose, we are announcing the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded project.

We will start more detailed planning at the Ubuntu Developer Summit next week in Seville and the first release of this edition will be in October with Ubuntu 7.10. If you are interested in the project, please get involved. We will be working through our normal development processes on Launchpad, the developer mailing lists and IRC.

Finally, we are delighted to be working with Intel on this version of Ubuntu. Intel are making significant contributions of technology, people and expertise to the project. We hope that others who are interested in producing an easy-to-use and open source environment for this class of device will join us in making this a success.

(Via Linux and Open Source Blog.)