DRM: The Gift that Keeps on Taking

Now, people, aren't you really glad you bought DRM'd music:

Customers who have purchased music from Microsoft's now-defunct MSN Music store are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to which computers (and OS) they want to authorize forever, or give up access to the music they paid for. Why? Because Microsoft has decided that it's done supporting the service and will be turning off the MSN Music license servers by the end of this summer.

...

This doesn't just apply to the five different computers that PlaysForSure allows users to authorize, it also applies to operating systems on the same machine (users need to reauthorize a machine after they upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista, for example). Once September rolls around, users are committed to whatever five machines they may have authorized—along with whatever OS they are running.

Good job nobody's upgrading to Vista, anyway.

How Will Microsoft Cope with Clouds?

One of the central questions for future computing is: How will Microsoft cope with clouds? In other words, when the PC platform becomes almost an adjunct, how will the company maintain its vice-like grip on the market? A typically thorough post here from Mary Jo Foley about Microsoft's Live Mesh provides some important clues. Here's one part that I found particularly interesting:

Even though the Live Mesh team went out of its way to emphasize that Microsoft sees Live Mesh as an open platform, and not just one designed to appeal to the Windows/.Net choir, both Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (Silverlight) are key elements of the Live Mesh developer stack (a diagram of which — here on the left — can be enlarged to full size by clicking on it). Support for Flash, Cocoa, JavaScript and other non-Microsoft-centric technologies is there, too. But given Live Mesh is from Microsoft, I’d wager Silverlight applications and services will look and work better as Live Mesh endpoints than apps/services built on and for Mac OSX/Safari, Linux and Mozilla ones.

This is standard lock-in: provide a nominally "open" platform, but make sure it works better with Microsoft products - a variant on the old "DOS ain't done 'til Lotus won't run." Some things never change....

Open Enterprise Interview: Denis Lussier

On Open Enterprise blog.

May You Live in Interesting Times

And this is certainly interesting:

Last night [Editor's note: Sunday, Apr 20] around 7pm my [American] friend was attacked by a mob of about 150 people outside the Carrefour in Zhuzhou, Hunan (near his placement site). When leaving Carrefour some of the crowd started shouting at him and he tried to say he didn't have anything to do with the Olympics, but 3 men started to push him and then he was hit in the back of the head at least 3 times. He started to run, and the mob chased him. He jumped into a cab, but the mob surrounded the car and started shaking and rocking it. The cab driver was shouting at him to get out. Then they started hitting the car. The crowd was shouting "kill him! kill the Frenchman." He called the Field Director while in the back of the car. The cab driver abandon the car when he saw police coming. Two police made there way though the mob and managed to drive the cab away. The Field Director alerted the Director Shu of the Hunan Department of Education. The police got him another cab and he took it from Zhuzhou to the field director's home in Changsha. He spending the night here in Changsha and is likely leaving China as soon as possible.

Glad I'm not going to the Olympics this year....

Update: Sigh, looks like some over-hasty reporting here.... Why can't people check this stuff out *before* posting?

Includipedia - Count Us In

As I've written elsewhere, I am a big fan of inclusionism when it comes to Wikipedia - the idea that there is no good reason why it shouldn't include entries on anything. After all, nobody forces you to read the stuff, and it's not as if it's sitting on your bookshelves. Includipedia feels the same:

The main difference between Includipedia and Wikipedia is that Includipedia will have an Inclusionst policy.

When people's work is trashed by deletionists, they become discouraged from contributing to Wikipedia. If many good Wikipedia editors get disgruntled with Wikipedia's deletionists, the important work of creating a repository of all information is harmed.

Why shouldn't every film, every TV programme episode, every small-circulation magazine, every pokemon character, etc have an article about it, if people want to write those articles? People who aren't interested in these subjects won't read them, and people who are interested will find them useful.

Also worth noting is Encoresoup, an partial, inclusionist version of Wikipedia all about free software:

The goal of Encoresoup is to provide a comprehensive reference guide to virtually all Free Software and Open Source projects and the FOSS ecosystem.

The core and inspiration for Encoresoup is the set of Wikipedia's FOSS articles managed by the Free Software WikiProject. Encoresoup seeks to build on and enhance this content in the following ways :

* Include many more articles. Practically any Free/Open Source Software project can be documented here (but see our inclusion policy) and we hope one day to host articles covering the vast majority of projects.

Eee - That's What I Call Speed

Another reason GNU/Linux will do well in the ultraportable sector: Windows XP is much slower than GNU/Linux on the Asus Eee PC.

I timed each part (starting up, launching Firefox, and shutting down) to see what the time difference really was. Here is what I found:

Startup
Linux: 30 seconds - Windows: 54 seconds
Launching Firefox
Linux: 4 seconds - Windows: 16 seconds
Shutdown
Linux: 6 seconds - Windows: 68 seconds

Ubuntu Rising

Amazing: as I write, the third most-read story on the high-traffic BBC News site is one about Ubuntu.

We're getting there, people....

Opendotdotdot Comments: An Apology

As several dozen of you will have noticed, I haven't been posting comments to some stories. The reason is simple: I never saw them. Gmail's spam filter decided that most of the comments sent to me for moderation should be summarily eaten.

It is only now, having gone through a few thousands spam messages, that I've found most of them (I hope) and posted them. Apologies for the delay. If I've missed any, please feel free to send them through again, and I'll try to save them from Gmail's anti-spam maw.

What's particularly worrying is that Google is rejecting messages from blogspot.com - it's own domain. Worse, I've found many Google alerts, from the google.com domain, also classed as spam. If Gmail can't even tell whether messages from Google are not spam, there's clearly something seriously wrong with Google's filters.

Anyone else having the same problems?

Has MySQL Forgotten All It Learnt?

On Open Enterprise blog.

Why Ubuntu on ARM Could be a Rich Seam

You may have heard of the ARM architecture, but you may not know just how widespread it is:

ARM today announced that the total number of processors shipped by its Partners has exceeded ten billion. The company developed its first embeddable RISC core, the ARM6 processor, in 1991, and its semiconductor Partners currently ship almost three billion ARM Powered processors each year.

So news that Ubuntu is being ported to the architecture is pretty cool:

A Nokia-sponsored project is porting Ubuntu Linux to the ARM architecture. The "Handheld Mojo" team has completed ARM builds of Feisty Fawn (dubbed "Frisky Firedrake") and Gutsy Gibbon ("Grumpy Griffin"), with Hardy Heron compilation starting soon.

Is This the Season of Porcine Aerobatics?

On Open Enterprise blog.

Why You Should Boycott the UK Biobank

I first came across proposals for the the UK Biobank when I was writing Digital Code of Life in 2004. It's an exciting idea:

UK Biobank aims to study how the health of 500,000 people, currently aged 40-69, from all around the UK is affected by their lifestyle, environment and genes. The purpose of this major project is to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of illnesses (such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, dementia, and joint problems) and to promote health throughout society.

By analysing answers, measurements and samples collected from participants, researchers may be able to work out why some people develop particular diseases while others do not. This should help us to find new ways to prevent early death and disability from many different diseases.

It's all about scaling: when you have vast amounts of information about populations, you can find out all kinds of correlations that would otherwise be obscured.

But as I noted in my book:

Meanwhile, the rise of biobanks - massive collections of DNA that may, like those in Iceland and Estonia, encompass an entire nation - will create tempting targets for data thieves.

This was well before the UK government started losing data like a leaky tap. Naturally, the UK Biobank has something to say on this issue:

Access is kept to a minimum. Very few staff have access to the key code. The computers which hold your information are protected by industry strength firewalls and are tested, so they are safe from hackers.

Sigh. Let's hope they know more about medical research than they do computer security.

But such security intrusions are not my main concern here. Again, as I wrote four years ago:

Governments do not even need to resort to underhand methods: they can simply arrogate to themselves the right to access such confidential information wherever it is stored. One of the questions addressed by the FAQ of a biobank involving half a million people, currently under construction in the United Kingdom, is: "Will the police have access to the information?" The answer - "only under court order" - does not inspire confidence.

I gathered from this blog post that invites are now going out, so I was interested to see what the UK Biobank has to say on the subject now that it has had time to reflect on matters:

Will the police have access to the information?

We will not grant access to the police, the security services or to lawyers unless forced to do so by the courts (and, in some circumstances, we would oppose such access vigorously).

"In some circumstances" - well, thanks a bunch. Clearly, nothing has changed here. The UK government will be able to waltz in anytime it wants and add those temping half a million DNA profiles to the four million it already has. After all, if you have nothing to hide, you can't possibly object.

Given the UK government's obsession with DNA profiles, and its contempt for any idea of privacy, you would be mad to sign up for the UK Biobank at present. Once your DNA is there (in the form of a blood sample), the only thing keeping it out of the government's hands is a quick vote in a supine Parliament.

Much as I'd like to support this idea, I won't have anything to do with it until our glorious leaders purge the current DNA database of the millions of innocent people - and *children* - whose DNA it holds, and shows itself even vaguely trustworthy with something as precious and quintessential as our genomes. And if the UK Biobank wants any credibility with the people whose help it needs, it would be saying the same thing.

Oyster Is...Toast

As Ben Laurie so eloquently puts it:

The MiFare stream cipher, as used in Oyster cards, has been comprehensively cracked. The researchers claim they can recover the key in well under 5 minutes after observing a single transaction.

Cold Facts About the Norwegian OOXML Scandal

The meeting was a farce and the result was a scandal. But it’s not over yet, and one thing is clear: the “little one” is unfit to represent the interests of Norwegian users. It’s time he was told, “Roll over, roll over…”

Shine the light, shine the light, people...

Open...Salad?

No, really:

Salad makes a perfect open source project. While most people think it's a drag to produce a whole salad, it's not so hard to get them to cough up one or two ingredients. The ingredients people contribute automagically turn out to be complimentary, most of the time. And, as more people contribute ingredients, the salad gets better and better.

When Will They Ever Learn?

On Open Enterprise blog.

Social Networks Save P2P

Amazing how things you put on your social networks can come back to bite you:

Police officer Jim Keyzer, the leader and key witness in the Pirate Bay investigation was recently employed by Warner Bros, one of the plaintiffs in the ongoing case against the Pirate Bay four. Undoubtedly, this will seriously hurt the credibility of the ongoing court case.

tpbKopit.se found out yesterday -through the police officer’s facebook profile- that Keyzer was recently employed by Warner Bros, one of the plaintiffs in the prosecution against The Pirate Bay. Keyzer has deleted his facebook profile, but confirmed that he indeed works for the company now.

OpenOffice.org Storms Away – on the Continent

On Open Enterprise blog.

Standard Deviation

Another corker here from Rob Weir on ISO's rather pathetic OOXML FAQ:

To put it in more approachable terms, observe that Ecma-376, OOXML, at 6,045 pages in length, was 58 standard deviations above the mean for Ecma Fast Tracks. Consider also that the average adult American male is 5' 9" (175 cm) tall, with a standard deviation of 3" (8 cm). For a man to be as tall, relative to the average height, as OOXML is to the average Fast Track, he would need to be 20' 3" (6.2 m) tall !

For ISO, in a public relations pitch, to blithely suggest that several thousand page Fast Tracks are "not unusual" shows an audacious disregard for the truth and a lack of respect for a public that is looking for ISO to correct its errors, not blow smoke at them in a revisionist attempt to portray the DIS 29500 approval process as normal, acceptable or even legitimate. We should expect better from ISO and we should express disappointed in them when they let us down in our reasonable expectations of honesty. We don't expect this from Ecma. We don't expect this from Microsoft. But we should expect this from ISO.

Ozzie on OSS

Interesting comments here from Ray Ozzie - "chief software architect" number 2 (after Bill) - on open source and Microsoft's relationship to it:

My position toward open source generally is that it's a part of the environment. It's very useful for developers to be able to get the source code to certain things, to modify them. Microsoft fundamentally, as a whole, has changed dramatically as a result of open-source as people have been using it more and more. The nature of interoperability between our systems and other systems has increased. I can tell you from an inside perspective ... when you build a new product, immediately you start thinking, how shall this product expose its APIs. ...

Open source is a reality. We have a software business that is based on proprietary software. We tactically or strategically, depending on how you look at it, will take certain aspects of what we do and we will open-source them where we believe there is a real benefit to the community and to the nature of the growth of that technology in open-sourcing it. ... The bottom line is we believe very much in the quality of Microsoft products and we are an (intellectual-property) based business. But we live in a world together with open-source, and we have to make it possible for you to build solutions, or customers to build solutions, that incorporate aspects of that.

The Evolution of Knowledge

This is moving in the right direction - towards *all* knowledge, freely online for *everyone* to use in *any* way - rather like free software:

Darwin's private papers online - the largest publication of Darwin's papers in history. Read about it here. Browse the papers here.

This site contains Darwin's complete publications, thousands of handwritten manuscripts and the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue ever published; [Click to enlarge] also hundreds of supplementary works: biographies, obituaries, reviews, reference works and more.

Almost all is online only here: such as 1st editions of Voyage of the Beagle, Zoology, Descent of Man, all editions of Origin of Species (1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th & 6th); important manuscripts: Beagle Diary & field notebooks, Journal, transmutation notebooks and Autobiography.

Forthcoming: more editions, translations, introductions & manuscripts.

But:

These materials may be freely used for non-commercial purposes and distribution to students; republication in any form requires written permission.

Why? Isn't knowledge for sharing?

Ah well, it's a good start.

Open Textbooks - An Idea Whose Time has Come?

Well, there's this call for affordable textbooks, including open textbooks:

One thousand professors from over 300 colleges in all 50 states released a statement today declaring their preference for high-quality, affordable textbooks, including open textbooks, over expensive commercial textbooks.

Open textbooks are complete, reviewed textbooks written by academics that can be used online at no cost and printed for a small cost. What sets them apart from conventional textbooks is their open license, which allows instructors and students flexibility to use, customize and print the textbook. Open textbooks are already used at some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions - including Harvard, Caltech and Yale - and the nation’s largest institutions - including the California community colleges and the Arizona State University system.

And then, as if on cue, we have a company, Flat World Knowledge, offering open textbooks:

Our books might feel like your current book – for a minute. They are written by leading experts, and are peer- reviewed, edited, and highly developed. They are supported by test banks, .ppt notes, instructor manuals, print desk copies, and knowledgeable service representatives. There the similarity ends.

Instead of $100 plus, our books are FREE online. We don't even require registration! Students just enter the URL they're given by their instructor and start reading. It's that easy. No tricks. No popup ads. No "a premium subscription is needed for that". In fact, our free books go beyond what standard print editions provide with integrated audio, video, and interactive features, powerful search capabilities, and more.

What's particularly interesting for me is the business model behind the open textbooks:

Our business model eliminates the catch. We're giving away great textbooks and making them open because it solves real problems for students and instructors. In so doing, we are creating a large market for our product. We then turn around and sell things of value to that large market – more convenient ways to consume our free book (print, audio, PDF) and efficient ways to study (study aids). Sure, we’ll make less money per student than the big guys. But that’s okay. We’ll be selling to a lot more of them, and we’ll be doing it for a lot less money (thanks to technology like web-hosted services, XML, print-on-demand, and more).

Which is, of course, the "classic" approach - well, at least around here - for free content: making money *around* the free stuff. Let's hope it works - we could all do with more quality open textbooks.

Tricky Things, Ecosystems

A decade ago, I and others started wittering on about the Microsoft monoculture - the fact that practically everyone was using the same OS, the same browser, the same office suite. This made crafting attacks much easier, because certain assumptions about what was on a given machine were almost certainly true.

Nowadays, with the rise of Firefox and, to a lesser extent, OpenOffice.org, you might think we've moved on. Apparently not:

We have different versions of the OS, and we have Mac users. But we’ve only got one Flash vendor, and everyone has Flash installed. Why do you care about Flash exploits? Because in the field, any one of them wins a commanding majority of browser installs for an attacker.

Moreover:

Although this document deals specifically with the Win32/intel platform, similar attacks can most likely be carried out on the many other platforms flash is available for. In particular, some of the methodology discussed might be useful for constructing a robust exploit on Unix platforms as well as several embedded platforms.

In other words, ecosystems need to be heterogeneous everywhere: as soon as you have a monoculture in some area, that becomes a weakness for the entire system to be attacked.

Not Economically Viable

Speaking as a mathematician, I have never understood why economics ignores its environmental effects, since this fundamental error in the model almost guarantees things like climate change, deforestation, overfishing and the rest. It seems I'm not the only one:

the mathematical theories used by mainstream economists are predicated on the following unscientific assumptions:

* The market system is a closed circular flow between production and consumption, with no inlets or outlets.
* Natural resources exist in a domain that is separate and distinct from a closed market system, and the economic value of these resources can be determined only by the dynamics that operate within this system.
* The costs of damage to the external natural environment by economic activities must be treated as costs that lie outside the closed market system or as costs that cannot be included in the pricing mechanisms that operate within the system.
* The external resources of nature are largely inexhaustible, and those that are not can be replaced by other resources or by technologies that minimize the use of the exhaustible resources or that rely on other resources.
* There are no biophysical limits to the growth of market systems.

If the environmental crisis did not exist, the fact that neoclassical economic theory provides a coherent basis for managing economic activities in market systems could be viewed as sufficient justification for its widespread applications. But because the crisis does exist, this theory can no longer be regarded as useful even in pragmatic or utilitarian terms because it fails to meet what must now be viewed as a fundamental requirement of any economic theory—the extent to which this theory allows economic activities to be coordinated in environmentally responsible ways on a worldwide scale. Because neoclassical economics does not even acknowledge the costs of environmental problems and the limits to economic growth, it constitutes one of the greatest barriers to combating climate change and other threats to the planet. It is imperative that economists devise new theories that will take all the realities of our global system into account.

Amen to that.

Oh, Tell Me the Truth About...Tibet

Amidst the sound and fury of the current standoff between China and the West over Tibet, this National Geographic Magazine feature - presumably written before current events - is about the most balanced that I've read anywhere. Here's a sample:

Tibetans I met acknowledged that along with oppression China has brought a standard of living far higher than that of their parents under the Dalai Lama's rule. The Chinese have built hundreds of schools, where until the 1950s there had been just a handful of nonreligious schools. They've built hospitals. Everywhere I traveled, they'd halted deforestation and are replanting trees, having learned through bitter experience in the summer of 1998 that the denuding of Tibet caused the Yangtze to flood, drowning 4,000 people. They've built airports and are beginning the first Tibetan railroad. They've also installed a telecommunications network, one that enabled me to dial directly to the U.S. Despite having a phone line to India, the best the Dalai Lama could do to send word across Lhasa from the dim recesses of the Potala Palace was to dispatch a runner.

Yet Tibetans almost invariably also said that China was implementing development solely to help exploit Tibet's natural resources. "Their goal is to extract all our treasures—timber, wildlife, gold, uranium—"and to make China rich and powerful," said a man in his late 20s in Chamdo, a town on the banks of the Mekong River.