Open Motes

Wow, a new one on me:

SquidBee is an Open Hardware and Source wireless sensor device. The goal of SquidBee is getting an "open mote" to create Sensor Networks.

The main concepts behind SquidBee are:

* Self-powered

* Wireless Comunications

Repeat with me: "Ubiquity, Ubiquity, Ubiquity..."

How does SquidBee work?

1. Acquires values from environment parameters: temperature, humidity, lightness, presence, pressure or (almost!) whatever you can sense.
2. Operates with these values, when required.
3. Transmits these values using a low power comsumption wireless technology (ZigBee).
4. Sleeps until next timeout and repeats from the first stept.

Second step is not always necessary, depending of the calculations needed it may be better to make them in receiver computer to save nodes energy.

An open mote? What does it really mean?

It means every part of the mote is accessible and can be studied, changed, personalized, ... From the schematic circuit to the source code of the programs that are running inside the mote.

(Via dailywireless.org.)

Microsoft's New Mantra: Choice Is Good

Recently I was bemused by Microsoft's espousal of ODF, and now here we have the company spreading more joy:

The company on Monday is expected to announce that it is sponsoring an open-source project to create a converter between Ecma Open XML--a set of file formats closely tied to Microsoft Office--and a Chinese national standard called Unified Office Format (UOF).

I think I understand what Microsoft is up to.

Until recently, its approach was to try to block ODF at every twist and turn: the last thing it wanted was another standard - much less a truly cross-platform, open one - to join the club of approved formats.

That strategy has failed: ODF is being chosen or is on the brink of being chosen by more and more governments around the world. And where governments lead, local business will follow. Microsoft is now faced with the prospect of losing its monopoly in the office sector. Indeed, it risks being locked out completely, as more and more countries opt for ODF only.

So I think Microsoft has decided to cut its losses, and go for a very different approach. Given that it can't shut out ODF, and there is a danger that Microsoft's OOXML will not be selected alongside it, the company is now pushing very hard for as many standards as possible: the new mantra being "Choice is Good". The point being, of course, that if you have lots of competing standards, then the one with the largest market share - Microsoft's - is likely to have the advantage.

It's a shrewd move, because at first blush it's hard to argue against having choice. But the flaw in this argument is that choice has to occur around the standard, through competing implementations, not between standards. In the latter case, all the benefits of open standards are lost, and the status quo is preserved. Which, of course, is exactly what Microsoft is hoping to achieve with its sudden rash of generosity.

Against Perpetual Copyright

Rather better than my curt dismissal below is this more rigorous explanation of why copyright should not be perpetual. Interestingly, it's a wiki, and therefore a collective creation. Also interestingly, it suffers from one fairly major flaw: it is much too long. So much so that even I, crazed copyright enthusiast that I am, find it hard to read to the end.

I think this may be a problem of the wiki format, which encourages honing and addition, but makes deletion difficult, because it feels like an act of sacrilege against the creation of others. But as any professional writer will tell you, one of the most valuable services that can be performed on prose is to cut it. When it comes to words, less is nearly always more.

Copyright Fool or Copyright Knave?

It's hard to decide whether the author of these words is a copyright fool or a copyright knave:

No good case exists for the inequality of real and intellectual property, because no good case can exist for treating with special disfavor the work of the spirit and the mind.

Well, apart from the one that intellectual property does not exist, is actually an intellectual monopoly, and hence a bad thing that should be limited as much as is possible?

Given that he comes from the Claremont Institute, whose mission is "to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life." - ooh, look, weasel words - maybe I can guess which side of the fool/knave watershed he falls. (Via Against Monopoly.)

Microsoft Starts to Get the Modularity Bug

First, this incredible opening par:

Some of the changes in the upcoming release of Windows Server 2008 are a response to features and performance advantages that have made Linux an attractive option to Microsoft customers.

Er, say that again? Windows Server 2008 is explicitly responding to GNU/Linux?

Then, this little nugget:

"Having less surface area does reduce the servicing and the amount of code you have running and exposed, so we have done a lot of work in 2008 to make the system more modular. You have the server manager; every role is optional, and there are more than 30 components not installed by default, which is a huge change," Laing said.

Ah, yes, modularity....

In Praise of Modularity (Again)

News that Firefox users tend to be more up-to-date with their security patches is interesting, especially for on account of the suggested explanation:

Much of this patching success has to be credited to Firefox's automatic update mechanism, which debuted in version 1.5 but was improved in version 2.0. The browser checks to see if a new version is available and notifies the user when it finds one. The security updates tend to be small (around 200KB to 700KB), which also makes the updating process less painful.

Internet Explorer, in contrast, is typically updated along with the rest of the system with Windows Update. Regular users of Windows Update automatically got upgraded from IE 6 to IE 7, so it is not surprising that people still stuck on IE 6 are not updating as much as IE 7. It's possible to assume that many of the people who aren't using Windows Update are avoiding it because the Windows Update web site checks (using WGA) to see if the user has a legitimate copy of the operating system, but as critical updates for IE 6 are still automatically downloaded by Windows even if WGA fails, it seems more likely that the numbers include legitimate users who have turned automatic updates off.

Once again, the virtues of modularity become clear - and turn out to have very clear real-world benefits too, in this case.

Google Enters the Fourth Dimension

It's a bit rudimentary at the moment, but Google's new Timeline view for searches is quite entertaining. (Via Vecosys.)

Microsoft Pays $6 Billion For Who???

Interesting: Microsoft has apparently paid $6 billion for a company I've never heard of - aQuantive. Aside from demonstrating my shallow knowledge, this also underlines the fact that we live in an online world driven by advertising. And people said the banner ad was dead....

An OGGly Duckling?

One of the things I love about Richard Stallman's crusade for freedom is that it is so uncompromising. This means that it tends to espouse strict, unimpeachable positions that may not be totally practical (which he would doubtless say is irrelevant).

A case in point is the new PlayOGG campaign, which encourages people to ditch MP3 files and use the OGG standard instead. Now, I yield to none in my admiration for OGG, but I really can't see this happening. Moreover, it's not long until the troublesome patents on MP3 expire anyway, so the whole question will become moot.

SOPERA: Beyond the SOA Soap Opera

I'm not the biggest fan of the SOA idea, which I find rather modish and ripe for being replaced by the next buzzword du jour, but I can hardly disagree with the second part of this statement:

„SOA und Open Source sind zwei der wichtigsten Trends in der IT. Die Verbindung von beiden bringt Unternehmen mehr Flexibilität bei geringeren Kosten“, sagt Ricco Deutscher.

["SOA and open source are two of the most important trends in IT. Bringing them together offers businesses more flexibility for lower costs," says Ricco Deutscher.]

Herr Deutscher is the CEO of the new company Sopera GmbH, which has just done something rather fine:

Deutsche Post World Net places SOA platform with Eclipse

IT service provider SOPERA will drive forward development of the platform at Eclipse

Bonn, 15 May 2007: After already announcing in April that it plans to make its SOA platform also available to other companies by the end of the year, Deutsche Post World Net has now secured a key basis for development with the Eclipse Foundation .

...

Deutsche Post’s IT service provider, SOPERA GmbH, will play a leading role in further development of the platform as a board member of the Eclipse Foundation. SOPERA managing director Dr. Ricco Deutscher describes the development perspectives: “It’s all about establishing an open-source, modular and standard-based SOA platform as part of a future open source stack.

This is good news for everyone, and emphasises how pivotal Eclipse is becoming - not just for open source, but computing in general. (Via James Governor's Monkchips.)

The Copyright Battle, Part II

I don't normally pay much attention to industry organisations, since they are pretty much self-serving. But the new Copyright Alliance (which so far doesn't seem to have a website) forms an interesting pairing with the Digital Freedom Campaign, which I wrote about last year. Copyright is and will be for some time an extremely hot issue.

Exporting Jurisdictions - the Other Way

We're used to seeing the US exporting its own ideas of what consitututes illegality when it comes to copyright and patents - notably through its free trade agreements - but here's a useful reminder that in today's interconnected world, things can flow the other way too:

As Second Life grows, the European market becomes a larger and larger part of its user base. ComScore estimates as a much as 61% of Second Life's residents are based in Europe (including 16% in Germany). While ComScore's likely overestimated the number of active European residents, there is no doubt that European users have made up a substantial percentage of Second Life's rapid growth over the last eighteen months. Enough growth, that Linden Lab is rumored to be looking for European collocation space. And with servers in Europe, the Second Life content on those servers would unequivocally fall under the laws of the nation(s) those servers are based in.

And since you cannot usefully carve up the metaverse based on the physical geography of its users, this means that European laws - notably on virtual child pornography - are likely to be applied to the whole of Second Life.

Microsoft Backs ODF

No, really:

Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has voted to support the addition of OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.0 to the nonexclusive American National Standards list.

Not quite sure why, but let's hope for the best. (Via tuxmachines.org.)

A Short Trip Through TRIPS

The WTO's Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement has figured many times in this blog. It's increasingly clear that it represents one of the bastions of old-style intellectual monopoly protection. Indeed, one measure of success in re-framing the debate about intellectual monopolies would be when TRIPS is repealed, or at least superseded. Here's a handy guide to it, together with links to recent TRIPS-related news.

The Guardian Identifies Itself on ID Cards

Good to see Charles Arthur coming out with a forthright attack on the madness that is the UK ID Card. Good, too, to see the Guardian returning to its roots by doing so.

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.