The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.
Er, don't most people leave this kind of approach behind in the playground? (Via Slashdot.)
I've railed frequently against the con-trick of calling intellectual monopolies "intellectual property", which tries to endow monopolies with the warm and fuzzy feeling people have for property. Now James Boyle has a great column in the FT where he points out a similar sleight of hand among the politicians:One sure sign of a lack of political vision is a rise in the number of pieces of acronymic legislation. After September 11, the US Congress passed the euphoniously named “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act” the initials of which spell out “USA – Patriot.” The Patriot Act is a pretty bad piece of legislation, but at least its drafters worked hard on the acronyms so that opponents could be labelled “anti-patriot” – a perfect level of analysis for Fox News. Admittedly, in this administration, having public officials torturing acronyms rather than detainees might be counted as a plus, but I still find the whole practice distasteful. I'd suggest that politicians vow to vote against any piece of legislation with its own normatively loaded acronym, no matter how otherwise appealing. It might make them focus a little more on the content.
In any event, Congress has been at it again. The House just passed, and the Senate is considering, the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008 – or “Pro-IP” Act. (If it passes, a version is sure to be urged on Europe as a matter of “harmonisation.”) Are you pro-intellectual property? Then surely you must be for this piece of legislation! The name says it all.
Yes, the name says it all, indeed. (Via B2fxxx.)
The BBC today unveils a new-look BBC iPlayer which fully integrates radio and TV in one interface, as the service records over 100 million requests to view programmes in the six months since its launch.
The new-look service, which launches in beta tomorrow, will 'dual run' alongside the existing iPlayer for the next few weeks.
Erik Huggers, the BBC's Group Controller for Future Media and Technology, says: "The next generation of BBC iPlayer allows UK licence fee payers to catch up on their favourite BBC TV and radio programmes in one place – a completely unique on-demand service.
Fantastic news - I'm a UK licence fee payer, so presumably I can catch up on all this goodness on my GNU/Linux systems, no?
Well, maybe not:The new-look BBC iPlayer will be available on other platforms for TV catch-up, including the Apple iPhone & iPod touch, and the Nintendo Wii.
Wot, no GNU/Linux? But wait:The new-look BBC iPlayer is available on PC, Mac, Linux, Virgin Media, Apple iPhone & iPod touch and Nintendo Wii.
So it's available for GNU/Linux, but does that mean I can use the catch-up service, the main bone of contention for iPlayer 1.0?
Clear as mud.
Pamela Jones has been digging through SCO stuff again, and doesn't like what she finds:
We learn two primary things from Jones' testimony: first, what a cynical role Sun played in the SCO saga, and second, that all the time SCO was calling on the world, the courts, the Congress -- nay heaven itself, if I may say so -- to sympathize with it over the ruination of its Most Holy Intellectual Property by it being improperly open sourced into Linux, not that it turned out to be true, it had already secretly given Sun the right to open source it in OpenSolaris. Remember all that falderol about SCO being contractually unable to show us the code, much as it so desired to do so, because of being bound to confidentiality requirements? What a farce. SCO had already secretly given Sun the right to open source Solaris, with all the UNIX System V you can eat right in there.
The simple fact is, I gather from Jones' testimony, Sun could have prevented the harm SCO sought to cause by simply telling us what rights it had negotiated and received from SCO prior to SCO launching its assault on Linux. Yet it remained silent. When I consider all folks were put through, all the unnecessary litigation, and all the fear and the threats and the harmful smears, including of me at the hands of SCO and all the dark little helper dwarves in SCO's workshop, I feel an intense indignation like a tsunami toward Sun for remaining silent.
Extraordinary to think that the SCO circus is still running; even more extraordinary if, as PJ suggests, Sun could have stopped all the FUD directed at Linux with a word.
I'm a big fan of the print on demand outfit Lulu.com - and not just because it was set up by one of the founders of Red Hat. Here's the same idea, applied to magazines:
MagCloud is an HP Labs research project evaluating new web services that will provide small independent magazine publishers, online content owners, and small businesses the ability to custom publish digitized magazines and economically print and fulfill on demand.
(Via ReadWiteWeb.)
Twenty years ago, James Hansen warned us about global warming, but few listened. With incredible patience, he has explained it all again - linking global warming, dependence on cheap oil, the refusal to factor in externalities to prices and the rest, in a dense web of trouble - in the hope that this time we will do something about it. If we don't, it's pretty clear to any rational, non-egoistic, individual that we are in big trouble - and that it will be even worse for our descendants.
I think the Asus Eee PC is a fab - and significant - machine, but have never really liked the Xandros distro it uses. Imagine how much better it would be if it used something mainstream like Debian. Maybe we don't have to imagine:I just received an encouraging note from Ellis Wang of Asus in Taiwan following up on Martin Michlmayr's suggestions to Asus about how they could work more closely with the Debian community. Ellis has assigned Robert Huang the task of putting a working relationship in place between Asus and Debian, with backup provided by five other Asus employees.
Here's hoping.... (Via Linux Loop.)
It has been clear since the mid 1990s that search engines are central to the Internet and its use. The rise of Google as the bellewether Net company has made their pivotal nature even more apparent. But there has been surprisingly little formal analysis of the dynamics of this market.
Step forward Rufus Pollock, well known to readers of this blog as the main driving force behind the Open Knowledge Foundation:
Internet search (or perhaps more accurately ‘web-search’) has grown exponentially over the last decade at an even more rapid rate than the Internet itself. Starting from nothing in the 1990s, today search is a multi-billion dollar business. Search engine providers such as Google and Yahoo! have become house-hold names, and the use of a search engine, like use of the Web, is now a part of everyday life. The rapid growth of online search and its growing centrality to the ecology of the Internet raise a variety of questions for economists to answer. Why is the search engine market so concentrated and will it evolve towards monopoly? What are the implications of this concentration for different ‘participants’ (consumers, search engines, advertisers)? Does the fact that search engines act as ‘information gatekeepers’, determining, in effect, what can be found on the web, mean that search deserves particularly close attention from policy-makers? This paper supplies empirical and theoretical material with which to examine many of these questions. In particular, we (a) show that the already large levels of concentration are likely to continue (b) identify the consequences, negative and positive, of this outcome (c) discuss the possible regulatory interventions that policy-makers could utilize to address these.
It has a handy short history of search engines, and then some rigorous economic analysis if you're into that sort of thing. (Via B2fxxx.)
First the good news:Last year, the European Patent Office (EPO) issued far fewer patents than in 2006. The Munich patent authorities have announced that they approved exactly 54,699 patent applications for commercial protection, 12.9 per cent fewer than in the previous year. EPO President Alison Brimelow says the drop is the result of a new focus on the quality of patents rather than quantity; patent applications actually increased by 3.9 per cent to 140,700. She said her office is making sure that the temporary monopoly rights granted are actually relevant. She says the figures show that the EPO is headed in the right direction.
Well, maybe, but heise online also has this to say:Nonetheless, the EPO staff's morale seems to have never been lower. A survey conducted among several thousand staff members found that only 4 per cent have faith in the management board. Only 6 per cent said they were satisfied with their direct superiors and the president. The auditors have also long been complaining that they are chronically overworked.
Last April, Brimelow herself complained that the backlog of work at the EPA and the other two largest patent offices in the US and Japan was only growing and could no longer be handled by current staff.
So fewer patents may well simply be the result of the fact that the EPO is getting swamped, and that quality will actually go down, not up. In any case, the EPO's own cries for help demonstrate that the idea of giving the EPO any more power through a unified European patent system is madness.
Madness:A bus-spotter says it is no longer safe to practise his hobby of 40 years after being branded a terrorist and a paedophile.
Rob McCaffery, 50, is proud of his 30,000 photos of trams and coaches but after being interrogated twice in 12 months he fears the time may have come to hang up his camera.
The credit controller, from Gloucester, says he now suffers "appalling" abuse from the authorities and public who doubt his motives.
The bus-spotter, officially known as an omnibologist, said: "Since the 9/11 attacks there has been a crackdown.
If any further proof were needed of the insanity of the so-called "war on terror" this is it: the great British tradition of bus-spotting seen as crypto-terrorism by pathetically susceptible minds. (Via Boing Boing.)
Failing to take the hint, NVidia decides to remain a pariah:
Nvidia reiterated that it won’t provide open source drivers for Linux because the company claims there is no need for it.
Nvidia provides binary Linux drivers and has open sourced some drivers such as the nv X driver and other utilities that work with the proprietary driver, including the installer, config and settings.The company is a leading provider of graphics cards and software for the desktop and embraces a cross platform strategy.
“NVIDIA supports Linux, as well as the Linux community and has long been praised for the quality of the NVIDIA Linux driver. NVIDIA’s fully featured Linux graphics driver is provided as binary-only because it contains intellectual property NVIDIA wishes to protect, both in hardware and in software,” the company said in a statement released today, in response to Linux kernel developers’ criticism of vendors that produce only closed source drivers.
If you thought that software patents in Europe had been seen off, think again. The ever-alert Digital Majority has spotted the following:
Simon Gentry is back in software patents lobbying. Now his role is to push for legalisation of software patents via the creation of central patent court in Europe.
Mr Gentry is speaking this week at the expensive conference IPBusinessCongress in Amsterdam, which is gathering many members of the patent community
The conference has a number of tell-tale topics:
Defining the Chief IP Office
which is a bit like defining a Chief Extortions OfficerIP in the age of open source and open innovation
which I don't imagine will be singing their praises, and finallyNew opportunities for patentowners in Europe
where those "opportunities" almost certainly amount to sneaking in software patents by the backdoor.
Be alert for more of this stuff: the price of freedom is eternal vigilance etc. etc. etc.
I have tremendous respect for what Bill and Melinda have chosen to do with the great wealth that Microsoft afforded. The Gates Foundation is tackling some huge challenges in global health with courage, innovation, and persistence, the same qualities which represented Microsoft at its best. But it doesn’t mean that the great Gates fortune was acquired in an entirely fair way or that Bill should be held up uncritically as a model of a successful businessman for doing so. To do so is to rewrite history and endorse a way of doing business which is harmful both to consumers and markets
.
Pretty much my view, too.
Rather pathetically for someone based in an island lying but a few dozens of kilometres off the continent, I am conscious of the fact that I don't write enough about the open goings-on in Europe. Matthew Aslett's excellent European Tour - by far the best round-up of OSS activity in Europe around - goes a long way to filling this need, but it's (presumably) something of a one-off.
What we need is more info from Over There on a regular basis, from someone who's well plugged into that scene. I find that Roberto Galoppini's postings on this topic are really helpful here, and definitely worth keeping an eye on if you're interested in what those funny people East of Dover are up to.
Interesting:Zheng argues that while China is making no meaningful progress toward democratization, the Internet is nonetheless causing "political liberalization." The Internet in China, he believes, is enabling greater public deliberation about policy (within limits to be sure) as well as forcing the leadership to be more responsive to public opinion - or at least that segment of public opinion that is able to appear on the part of the Internet that you can access in China, which despite its limitations still gives Chinese citizens a conduit of expression that was not available before. Zheng points to several cases where public reaction to and discussion of information posted online led to policy changes: outrage over Sun Zhigang's death in detention led to abolition of the "Custody and Repatriation" system; outrage over the detention of outspoken rural business tycoon Sun Dawu created pressure on provincial governments and the central government to change policy practices that discriminate against the private sector. During the SARS outbreak, information, concerns (and wild rumors) posted on the Internet and sent through mobile SMS eventually broke down government attempts at tight information control. He also points to wildly unsuccessful cases: use of the Internet by the outlawed FLG and the opposition China Democracy Party to criticize the regime and call for an end to one-party rule by the CCP. What's the difference?
Zheng says that the difference between success and failure comes down to an online movement's strategy and objectives. The most spectacularly unsuccessful online movements (and the ones leading to the most brutal crackdowns both online and off) tend to advocate what he calls the "exit" option - i.e. that the Chinese people should exit one-party CCP rule, or that a particular group or territory might have the right to do so. The Chinese bureaucracy and leadership contains reformists and conservatives. However "when the regime is threatened by challengers, the soft-liners and hard-liners are likely to stand on the same side and fight the challengers." Successful online movements in China tend to use what he calls the "voice" option, or what other political scientists call the "cooperation option." The key to a successful effort to change government policy in China is to find a way to give reformist leaders and bureaucrats at all levels of government the ammunition they need to win out in arguments and power-struggles with their hard-line conservative colleagues. Reformists can point to what's being said in the chatrooms and blogs and in the edgier newspapers and argue that without change, there will be more unrest and public unhappiness - thus change is required to save the regime. Zheng writes: "the voice does not aim to undermine or overthrow the state. Instead, through a voice mechanism, the state can receive feedback from social groups to respond to state decline and improve its legitimacy."
After Erik, here's Ashley, currently Director, BBC Future Media & Technology, but moving on:So, there you have it. I've enjoyed using Ubuntu, it has a simplicity and elegance that I like and some great features that other OSes don't have (and I appreciate that I've only been scratching the surface). And it's free.
But I'd say it's horses for courses. For enterprise-side usage, or as a developers' workstation, or as a cheap platform for people with a fair amount of time on their hands and a willingness to deal with all the websites that only vaguely support Linux, fine.
For me, as a day to day operating system, would I churn from Windows or MacOS for it? Not yet; perhaps in a year or two. Critically though, I think the BBC can, and should, do more to support the Free and Open Source community, and I hope this has at least shown my commitment to listen and learn!
Mr TechCrunch can be slightly obnoxious at times, but on this one I can only applaud him:
now the A.P. has gone too far. They’ve quoted twenty-two words from one of our posts, in clear violation of their warped interpretation of copyright law. The offending quote, from this post, is here (I’m suspending my A.P. ban to report on this important story).
Am I being ridiculous? Absolutely. But the point is to illustrate that the A.P. is taking an absurd and indefensible position, too. So I’ve called my lawyers (really) and have asked them to deliver a DMCA takedown demand to the A.P. And I will also be sending them a bill for $12.50 with that letter, which is exactly what the A.P. would have charged me if I published a 22 word quote from one of their articles.
If nothing else, this shows the value to the blogosphere of having a few A-list bloggers with deep pockets.
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