29 January 2008
Schneier on the False Dichotomy
Once more, Brucie tells it as it is:
Security and privacy are not opposite ends of a seesaw; you don't have to accept less of one to get more of the other. Think of a door lock, a burglar alarm and a tall fence. Think of guns, anti-counterfeiting measures on currency and that dumb liquid ban at airports. Security affects privacy only when it's based on identity, and there are limitations to that sort of approach.
When are they going to make this man President of the USA?
28 January 2008
Not Patently Clear...
In a surprising (to this Kat at least) turn of events, the Honourable Mr Justice Kitchin has ruled today that the current UK Patent Office practice of flatly rejecting patent claims to computer program products is wrong.
This is obviously bad news, if true, but looking at the very interesting comments to the above post, there seems to be a lot of doubt about whether the ruling does, in fact, mean precisely that, or something else.
Clear as mud, then. But certainly worrying....
Update: Some clarity provided in this useful post; bad news, though....
Free Music Goes Mainstream
What's interesting about this piece in the Guardian describing how the music industry is finally waking up to the virtues of free is that it brings together most of the arguments that I and others (notably Mike Masnick on Techdirt) have been banging on about for years. Looks like the industry has (almost) got it. We shall see.
Coincidence, Or...?
Ha!PLIO, the volunteer association behind the Italian version of OpenOffice.org, underlines the incredible and funny coincidence between the number of Italians that have downloaded Microsoft Office 2007 Trial Version - just ove one million, according to a Microsoft Italia press release - and the number of new downloads of OpenOffice.org in 2007.
FT: No ID - No Comment...
In the two years since legislation for a UK national identity card scheme gained royal assent, the case against the multi-billion pound programme has become overwhelming. The government’s arguments in favour have crumpled. Now, if leaked official documents are to be believed, its roll-out is to be delayed until 2012. Some investors, concerned that it is not worth the wait, are already walking away. Gordon Brown inherited this deeply flawed plan from his predecessor as prime minister. He should follow his instincts and abandon it altogether.
Not only would ID cards be an unwelcome infringement of personal freedom – they were scrapped in Britain after the second world war because people resented being asked to prove who they were – there is no evidence their introduction would deliver tangible benefits.
No, not another of my rants, but the editorial in a little publication called the Financial Times.... (Via Open Rights Group.)
Too Good to be True?
Interesting:Monroe was the victim of a "money mule" scam, in which criminals make use of third parties (often unsuspecting victims like Monroe) to launder stolen funds. Mule recruitment is an integral part of many cyber crime operations because money transferred directly from a victim to an account controlled by criminals is easily traced by banks and law enforcement. The mules, therefore, serve as a vital buffer, making it easier for criminals to hide their tracks.
The bottom line:The old adage, "If an offer or deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is," is just as appropriate in the online world than it is in the physical world, said eBay's Pires.
- Unless, of course, it's free software.... (Via Slashdot.)
Welsh Death-Wish
As someone with a Welsh first name, I have always taken an interest in the Welsh language and efforts to promote it and keep it in the land of the living. Alas, this ain't one of them:
Scores of writers are refusing to let their works be scanned for an online archive at the National Library of Wales because they are not being paid.
A year after a near-£1m project was awarded to digitise modern Welsh writing, a dispute between authors and the library has not been resolved.
The library is putting some 3.5m words from 20th Century English and Welsh periodicals and magazines on the web.
But literature promotion agency Academi wants writers to be paid a share.
Academi chief executive Peter Finch said: "It's an extremely exciting programme: what's wrong with it is there is no small sliver in there for paying the writers.
Hello??? The "small sliver" is that your words live on and people can read the bleddy things. Refusing to allow works written in Welsh to be digitised (which costs money) is a sure way to ensure that the language languishes and becomes even more marginal in the digital age. (Via paidContent UK.)
27 January 2008
GNU GPL: It's Irrevocable
I know by now you've seen the notice by the guy claiming to "revoke" the GPL license on his code, because I'm getting email about it.
Here's the answer to your question:
No. One can't retroactively revoke licenses previously granted, unless the license terms allow you to do so. The most you can do is stop granting new licenses.
Obvious, innit?
26 January 2008
Open Students
Welcome to Open Students, a new blog for students about open access to research.
...
Open Students is proudly sponsored by SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, as part of its student outreach activities.
This is a shrewd move: get 'em while they're young....
Radiohead: The Meme Spreads
the UK band known as the Charlatans are joining Saul Williams and Radiohead with their next album release with a ‘name your own price’ mechanism for distribution.
What's also interesting is that the meme is spreading in part via an emerging community:It is also worthy of note that a camaraderie of sorts seems to be forming in this new ‘underground’ distribution technique. The record producer that mixed You Cross My Path and The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust, Alan Moulder, is best known as the producer for Nine Inch Nails, The Smashing Pumpkins and The Jesus and Mary Chain. Now, he’s making a new name for himself as producer to the free crowd.
25 January 2008
FixYa Fixes the Real-Life Support Hole
Although free software has a reputation for patchy documentation and non-existent support, that's not really true at all: there's buckets of stuff out there, usually written by extremely knowledgeable people, and lots of enthusiasts ready to advise. What *is* true, is that everyday consumer devices haven't had anything like that deep, community-generated online support.
FixYa asks: why not?FixYa was founded by a frustrated consumer who noticed that most manufacturers of gadgets, electronics and consumer products were not providing adequate technical support through their web sites, despite these products becoming more and more technologically advanced. Whether it was a digital camera, printer, or laptop - manufacturers were not allocating the necessary resources to meet customers' increased demand for technical support, troubleshooting, and easy access to product manuals. It was from this lack of easy-to-access technical information and product support that the FixYa online technical support community was formed.
FixYa is now the largest online source for free technical advice on gadgets, electronic equipment and consumer products. FixYa users can quickly and easily post technical questions for Experts in the FixYa troubleshooting forums - seeking solutions for problems or advice/instructions on proper usage of a product. Users can also upgrade to Premium Assistance to get fast, guaranteed technical assistance from Top Experts - via posting or Live Chat.
The power of FixYa stems from the unique, community-generated content found in the FixYa troubleshooting forums. Technical problems and solutions posted on FixYa are based on users' real life experiences, rather than the hypothetical scenarios presented in product manufacturers' FAQs. And through FixYa's unique rating system, problem solutions are continually refined, with the goal of offering users the most helpful and accurate technical support information possible for any consumer product.
Sounds like a classic open source/open content/user-generated business model. But the cynic in me said that it was doubtless deeply flawed by wickedly appropriating all that content for itself. Nope:All content, either text, pictures, or graphics, on the site that has been contributed by users is designated as Open Content. All such content may be copied, reproduced, distributed, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted or transmitted as long as (1) it is not displayed on a commercial site (except on message boards) or used for commercial purposes, (2) prominent attribution is given to FixYa, and (3) attribution is given to the original author(s) as listed on FixYa.com. If the original author is listed as "Anonymous" on FixYa.com, attribution to the author is not required.
FixYa maintains a compilation copyright on its user-submitted content. This user-submitted content may by reproduced in part for non-commercial purposes as described in the paragraph above, but may not be reproduced as a whole through any medium without the express permission of FixYa.com.
My only criticism would be that "Open Content" is rather vague here. Maybe it would be better to use the cc-by-nc licence, which seems to fit the bill.
Get Creative with Creative Content Online
The European Commission wants your help:On 03/01/2008, the Commission adopted a Communication on Creative Content Online which launches further actions to support the development of innovative business models and the deployment of cross-border delivery of diverse online creative content services.
The transfer of creative content services to the online environment is an example of major systemic change. Building on the results of the 2006 consultation process, while complementing the initiatives already undertaken in the context of the i2010 strategy, the Commission intends to launch further actions to support the development of innovative business models and the deployment of cross-border delivery of diverse online creative content services.
That's good; less good is that among the four challenges are two where the Commission has got it all wrong:Interoperability and transparency of Digital Rights Management systems (DRMs) - Technologies allowing management of rights in the online environment can be a key enabler for the content sector's digital shift and for the development of innovative business models - especially with regard to high value content. As lengthy discussions among stakeholders did not yet lead to the deployment of interoperable DRM solutions, there is a need to set a framework for transparency of DRMs regarding interoperability, by ensuring proper consumer information with regards to usage restrictions and interoperability.
Legal offers and piracy - Piracy and unauthorised up- and downloading of copyrighted content remains a central concern. It would seem appropriate to instigate co-operation procedures ("code of conduct") between access/service providers, right holders and consumers in order to ensure a wide online offer of attractive content, consumer-friendly online services, adequate protection of copyrighted works, awareness raising/education on the importance of copyright for the availability of content and close cooperation fight piracy/unauthorised file-sharing.
DRM is a dying model; the idea of trying to make such a dinosaur technology compatible across the EU is bonkers. Even worse is the thought that ISPs should be policing content, or that we should be brainwashing children to chant the multifaceted marvellousness of intellectual monopolies. Time to get those word-processors sharpened....
Just Drop It
Oh, great:Music Drop
In one gesture
One drop that contains one song which can be used only one time to emphasize the value of the product and the meaning of giving.
As in: introduce an artifical scarcity where there is none? And add to the heap of poisonous high-tech detritus we dump in the environment while you're at it? Nein, danke. (Via The Next Web blog.)
Miles Better?
I am constantly struck by the fact that the more you ponder certain things, the more complex they get. One area where that's particularly true is sustainability: trying to balance the pros and cons or actions can lead to serious headaches.
Take the issue of organic food, for example. This is clearly good, since it uses less pesticides, does less damage blah-blah-blah. Ah, but now we find that much of that organic food is being produced in Africa, and then air-freighted to the West. So clearly that is bad, since the damage caused by carbon emissions must outweigh the good derived from the organic nature of the farming. Or maybe not:Global warming is a universal concern (with a strong African dimension too), and carbon emissions merit growing vigilance. But a global problem demands global solutions. Trade policy can be used to set the right incentives for sustainable development. But focusing too narrowly on long-distance transportation of organic produce is false economy: bad for the environment and bad for development.
One thing is for sure: more information may make things harder to parse, but it is also the only hope we have for arriving at the right decision. Keep on pondering.
Open Architecture Network
We all know about open network architecture, but what about the Open Architecture Network?The Open Architecture Network is an online, open source community dedicated to improving living conditions through innovative and sustainable design. Here designers of all persuasions can:
• Share their ideas, designs and plans
• View and review designs posted by others
• Collaborate with each other, people in other professions and community leaders to address specific design challenges
• Manage design projects from concept to implementation
• Communicate easily amongst team members
• Protect their intellectual property rights using the Creative Commons "some rights reserved" licensing system and be shielded from unwarranted liability
• Build a more sustainable future
Open source is about sharing code patterns, Open Architecture is about sharing building patterns. Obvious, when you think about it. (Via C|net.)
Genomics Goes Read-Write
One of Larry Lessig's favourite tropes is that we live in a read-write world these days, where creation is just as important as consumption. Well, hitherto, genomics has been pretty much read only: you could sequence the DNA of an organism, but creating entire genomes of complex organisms (such as bacteria) has been too tricky. Now that nice Dr Venter says he's gone and done it:A team of 17 researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) has created the largest man-made DNA structure by synthesizing and assembling the 582,970 base pair genome of a bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium JCVI-1.0. This work, published online today in the journal Science by Dan Gibson, Ph.D., et al, is the second of three key steps toward the team’s goal of creating a fully synthetic organism. In the next step, which is ongoing at the JCVI, the team will attempt to create a living bacterial cell based entirely on the synthetically made genome.
The team achieved this technical feat by chemically making DNA fragments in the lab and developing new methods for the assembly and reproduction of the DNA segments. After several years of work perfecting chemical assembly, the team found they could use homologous recombination (a process that cells use to repair damage to their chromosomes) in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to rapidly build the entire bacterial chromosome from large subassemblies.
He even gives some details (don't try this at home):The process to synthesize and assemble the synthetic version of the M. genitalium chromosome began first by resequencing the native M. genitalium genome to ensure that the team was starting with an error free sequence. After obtaining this correct version of the native genome, the team specially designed fragments of chemically synthesized DNA to build 101 “cassettes” of 5,000 to 7,000 base pairs of genetic code. As a measure to differentiate the synthetic genome versus the native genome, the team created “watermarks” in the synthetic genome. These are short inserted or substituted sequences that encode information not typically found in nature. Other changes the team made to the synthetic genome included disrupting a gene to block infectivity. To obtain the cassettes the JCVI team worked primarily with the DNA synthesis company Blue Heron Technology, as well as DNA 2.0 and GENEART.
From here, the team devised a five stage assembly process where the cassettes were joined together in subassemblies to make larger and larger pieces that would eventually be combined to build the whole synthetic M. genitalium genome. In the first step, sets of four cassettes were joined to create 25 subassemblies, each about 24,000 base pairs (24kb). These 24kb fragments were cloned into the bacterium Escherichia coli to produce sufficient DNA for the next steps, and for DNA sequence validation.
The next step involved combining three 24kb fragments together to create 8 assembled blocks, each about 72,000 base pairs. These 1/8th fragments of the whole genome were again cloned into E. coli for DNA production and DNA sequencing. Step three involved combining two 1/8th fragments together to produce large fragments approximately 144,000 base pairs or 1/4th of the whole genome.
At this stage the team could not obtain half genome clones in E. coli, so the team experimented with yeast and found that it tolerated the large foreign DNA molecules well, and that they were able to assemble the fragments together by homologous recombination. This process was used to assemble the last cassettes, from 1/4 genome fragments to the final genome of more than 580,000 base pairs. The final chromosome was again sequenced in order to validate the complete accurate chemical structure.
But the real kicker was this comment:“This is an exciting advance for our team and the field. However, we continue to work toward the ultimate goal of inserting the synthetic chromosome into a cell and booting it up to create the first synthetic organism,” said Dan Gibson, lead author.
Yup, you read that correctly: we're talking about porting and then *booting-up* an artificial genome, aka digital code of life.
How Do You Say "Commons" in Chinese?
One of the key themes of this blog is the idea of a commons, be it one constructed out of free software, open content or DNA. But as the very word suggests, there is a very specific history behind the concept, which raises an interesting question: how relevant is it in other cultures? Is it even meaningful if there is no corresponding equivalent?
Here are some interesting thoughts on the situation in China:Lawrence Liang, a lawyer of Chinese descent from Bangalore, gave a brilliant talk (I'm told all his talks are brilliant - this was the first time I've heard him speak) titled "How Does An Asian Commons Mean." No, that's not a typo. He points out that "the metaphor of the commons as it is used in debates on information emerges from a specific history of the enclosures movement in Europe." The task of articulating an Asian Commons requires more than merely translating existing initiatives such as Creative Commons, but rather "to answer larger questions of what it means to provide an epistemological account of the commons in Asia." This is especially challenging because the idea that one can consider oneself "Asian" and that such a label has real cultural or social meaning "is a "diplomatic fiction... neither Asia nor commons has any substantive content."
Fascinating stuff.
Crowdsourcing Security
Researchers at Purdue University are working with the state of Indiana to develop a system that would use a network of cell phones to detect and track radiation to help prevent terrorist attacks with radiological "dirty bombs" and nuclear weapons.
Such a system could blanket the nation with millions of cell phones equipped with radiation sensors able to detect even light residues of radioactive material. Because cell phones already contain global positioning locators, the network of phones would serve as a tracking system, said physics professor Ephraim Fischbach.
That's the way to do it: you co-opt people by making them part of society's tracking system, rather than regarding everyone as a potential terrorist who needs to be tracked. (Via Slashdot.)
Freeing French Growth with Free Software
Amongst many other things, one matter that they order better in France is the production of government reports with a grand sweep. One was published a couple of days ago, with the self-explanatory title Rapport de la Commission pour la libération de la croissance française.
Well, anything that talks about "libération" obviously makes my one-track mind think of free software, and I wasn't disappointed, since one of the report's proposals is about precisely that:Promouvoir la concurrence entre logiciels propriétaires et logiciels « libres ».
Le patrimoine d’applications dites « libres » ou « open source », créées par une communauté active, représente l’équivalent de 131 000 années/hommes, dont pratiquement la moitié provient de programmeurs européens. Si le coût virtuel en est de 12 Md €, le coût réel est de 1,2 Md € et les communautés de logiciels libres s’engagent gracieusement à proposer en continu des améliorations et des applications. Le logiciel libre induit une économie moyenne de 36 % en recherche et développement pour les entreprises utilisatrices. Il permet de créer une concurrence pour les logiciels propriétaires, dont les avantages sont différents. Leur part de marché n’est aujourd’hui que de 2 % (avec une croissance annuelle de 40 %) contre 98 % pour les logiciels dits « propriétaires ». Pour développer la concurrence, une série d’actions est nécessaire :
• Promouvoir la concurrence entre les logiciels propriétaires et les logiciels libres dans les appels d’offres, notamment publics. Un objectif de 20 % des applications nouvellement développées ou installées au profit du secteur public en open source pourrait être fixé à l’horizon 2012.
• Considérer fiscalement, comme aux États-Unis, les aides aux communautés des logiciels libres comme du mécénat de compétence.
• Exiger, à un niveau européen dans le cadre de la politique de la concurrence entre solutions logicielles, la fixation de normes internationales garantissant l’interopérabilité entre logiciels libres et les logiciels propriétaires, en priorité.
There are some important points here.
First, that out of 316 recommendations, one should be explicitly about free software. Secondly, that the virtue of promoting the increased use of free software over proprietary software is recognised. Thirdly, there is an ambitious target that 20% of new installations of software by the French government should be open source by 2012.
Finally, and in some ways most importantly, there is a call for interoperability between free software and proprietary code to be mandated at a European level. In the context of Microsoft's recent setback at the hands of the European Commission on precisely this point, I think we can see which way the wind is blowing.
Vive l’interopérabilité!
William Gibson Looks Back from the Future
What do you get when one of the sharpest journalists interviews one of the sharpest writers? This:
You made your name as a science-fiction writer, but in your last two novels you've moved squarely into the present. Have you lost interest in the future?
It has to do with the nature of the present. If one had gone to talk to a publisher in 1977 with a scenario for a science-fiction novel that was in effect the scenario for the year 2007, nobody would buy anything like it. It's too complex, with too many huge sci-fi tropes: global warming; the lethal, sexually transmitted immune-system disease; the United States, attacked by crazy terrorists, invading the wrong country. Any one of these would have been more than adequate for a science-fiction novel. But if you suggested doing them all and presenting that as an imaginary future, they'd not only show you the door, they'd probably call security.
Unmissable. (Via Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard.)
24 January 2008
Sharing Rules of Thumb
One of the key properties of open endeavours is winnowing down and sharing of essential information so that others can build on it. Here's a site that seems to be a distant cousin:
A hundred years ago, people used rules of thumb to make up for a lack of facts. Modern day rule of thumbing is rooted in an overabundance of facts. The average person, confronted with the Internet’s oceans of data and multiple overlapping Ph.D. dissertations, often is as perplexed as a pioneer chemist trying to whip up a little gunpowder without a formula. A pilot in a tight spot doesn't ask questions about aeronautical engineering; a pilot in a tight spot asks "now what?" There are times when you don't need to know the best way to do something. These are times for ballpark figures, for knowing what you probably can get away with.
Surprisingly addictive. (Via Joho the Blog.)
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