Reed Elsevier Steals Blogger's Words...
...and then copyrights them. Much more here.
14 August 2008
13 August 2008
Data Snooping Mission Creep
Oh, look, what a surprise: it's not just for anti-terrorism:
Local councils, health authorities and hundreds of other public bodies are to be given the power to access details of everyone's personal text, emails and internet use under Home Office proposals published yesterday.
And, look, they still haven't learned about the dangers of centralised databases:The government has already indicated that it intends to go one step further this autumn by introducing a draft communications bill which would require all the telecommunications companies to hand over this data to one central "super" database so that the police and other public authorities will be able to access it directly without having to make a request each time to the individual company holding the records.
Well, at least that will make it easier to steal....
12 August 2008
Is Huggers Hunkering Down to Openness?
Hope:the BBC has always been a strong advocate and driver of open industry standards. Without these standards, TV and radio broadcasting would simply not function. I believe that the time has come for the BBC to start adopting open standards such as H.264 and AAC for our audio and video services on the web. These technologies have matured enough to make them viable alternatives to other solutions.
and even a touch of humour:This is a rather important moment for me personally. Having been responsible for driving one of those proprietary alternatives, it feels great to be at the forefront in driving the next wave in internet audio and video technologies and services.
Now, about those iPlayer downloads for GNU/Linux....
Dell Builds on GNU/Linux
Interesting:Dell’s Latitude On works by bypassing the Windows operating system so that you get immediate access to things like your calendar, email, Internet, and contacts. It’s a fully integrated technology that will appear later this year on the Dell 4200 and 4300 Latitude series notebooks, and is powered by a Linux OS, sort of as a secondary operating system.
How Many Out of Ten for Number 10?
Number 10 has a new look for its Web site...and it's rather good (love the blues). Moreover, it's gone all Web 2.0: Flickr stream, YouTube channel - even Twitter.
That's all well and good, but I wonder whether Team Number 10 has taken on board what Web 2.0 is really about: listening to the community of users (that would be the electorate, Gordon), not just dictating in an authoritarian manner.
Time will tell whether it's a real sea-change, or all just Spin 2.0....
Update: Turns out it's something *much* richer....
The Recording Angel
Thousands of recordings that had been largely consigned to the realm of prehistory in the digital age have gained a new life, thanks to the tireless efforts of one man.
...
As the digital music movement started in earnest, Bolling began digitizing his records, and posted a list of first 1,500 songs he had digitized so fellow collectors could see what kind of progress he had made. Finally, he decided to upload MP3s of every song on the list so that he could access them from anywhere, and so that curiosity seekers could find them.
And so another commons is created, thanks to Cliff Bolling.
Microsoft (Hearts) Intellectual Monopolies...
...provided they are its own:
Microsoft has always been rather strident on the topic of copyright infringement, as you may have noticed, which makes tale of its "Iconic Britain" photo contest all the more astonishing.
The competition was designed as part of the marketing campaign around Windows Live Image Search, with Nikon as the prize partner. Unlike most photographic competitions, which tend to involve photographers submitting their own work (crazy, I know), this one invited entrants to search for other people's online pictures, then submit the ones they felt were iconic British stuff, in the hope of winning a Nikon camera. As for the photographers themselves, they get nada--not even a link-back to their site or a credit of their name.
photos
Spotted the problem yet?
Inevitably, the reality of this situation hit the photographic community, following which the feces really hit the fan. Here's a particularly entertaining thread on Flickr, in which members vent at the fact that their photos--many of which had been set for private viewing only--had been scraped by Microsoft and pulled over, creditless, to Microsoft's servers.
Another case of do as I say, not as I do.
11 August 2008
10 August 2008
09 August 2008
T-Mobile Gets the Open Meme
T-Mobile is working with the industry to foster an open wireless services platform which will provide developers with the tools and information they need to make new, innovative experiences available to T-Mobile’s more than 31.5M customers.
I'm not sure exactly how open their open is, but it's interesting that T-Mobile has adopted this as a strategy to fight back against its bigger rivals.
08 August 2008
Online: Slander or Libel?
A nice outbreak of sanity, here:A High Court judge ruled this week that defamatory comments on internet forums are more like slander than libel, a judgement that could make success in such cases more difficult. Mr Justice Eady found that posts on internet discussion groups such as website bulletin boards are closer to spoken conversations than to published articles, being casual and characterised by "give and take".
Slander is defamation through speech, while libel is defamation through written means, such as a newspaper article. In the UK, it is significantly easier to win damages for libel than for slander.
He that Filches From Me My Good Name
Danny O'Brien has an interesting meditation on the difference between controlling who copies something, and controlling who claims to have created it. Cory Doctorow makes an illuminating observation on the same:
I'm reminded of the fact that the original Creative Commons license allowed creators to choose whether they wanted their works attributed to them or not, but after a year or two, it was discovered that nearly every CC user turned the attribution switch on while generating the license -- everyone wanted correct attribution, even when they were giving away free copies.
It's reputation that counts.
The Sun Shines on Asus
What struck me about this article in the Sun about Asus was how it took its readership's acquaintance with GNU/Linux for granted:Interestingly, it runs Windows XP as an operating system to keep the costs down rather than Vista and a Linux version is on the way.
If that is laid out in menu terms like the Linux EEE laptops, then it's well worth a punt on one as a second PC in a bedroom.
Signs of the times....
07 August 2008
Why DNA Databases Are Doomed
I've been against DNA databases for years, but I've always felt that the generic arguments I've been using were a little pallid, shall we say. And now, in what amounts to almost a throwaway comment, the wonderful Reg gives me what I've been looking for:
Although police are keen to bang the drum for cases where DNA evidence has proved vital, there are obvious privacy objections as well as fears that over-reliance on DNA evidence will lead criminals to use it as an alibi - infecting a crime scene with someone else's DNA.
At the moment, there's not much point doing that because DNA isn't regarded as as an indispensable, infallible tool. Put everyone's DNA in a database, and the police are bound to get lazy - that's human nature - using it as a quick and foolproof method for finding perpetrators.
At that point, it will be worth seeding crime scenes with some judiciously-chosen DNA - secure in the knowledge that the rozzers will be able to work out whose it is. At this point, DNA begins to lose its value, as everyone starts sprinkling the stuff everywhere, utterly confusing the DNA bloodhounds.
And so, inevitably, we will be left with a huge DNA database, useless for its original purpose, built at enormous cost, posing an even huger security risk. Great. Not.
06 August 2008
I'm Touched
GigaOM has a post about touch-based computers, noting that the pioneer in this field was HP. Accompanying the article is a pic of HP's trailblazing machine, the 1983 HP-150.
Reader, I marred it!
(To explain, I managed to delete a review of the self-same machine that I was writing on it, by stabbing my finger at the wrong point of the screen. An article I had not backed up. It was the last such article - well, so far....)
Solving the Mono Problem
Alan Lord grapples manfully with Mono:
The nasty taste which has always ‘ever-so-slightly’ tainted my use of Ubuntu is that Mono is there only to support applications written in languages and for platforms which are basically Microsoft’s. It encourages software development using systems that are based on technologies almost certainly encumbered by a whole raft of M$ patents. To my mind, there are many great non M$ languages and architectures out there which are almost part-and-parcel of Linux programming and I see no need to bring .NET, ASP or even Visual Basic to my desktop. If I want to write an application, I could use PHP, Python, PERL, C, C++, Java and, of course, many others. Why do I need to endorse and encourage the proliferation of non-free software by relying on M$’s IP and the smell of their stinky patents?
Interesting discussion of what happens when you rip Mono out of Ubuntu: nothing, it seems....
ACTA's Unspeakable Acts
Since neither the EU nor the UK government has deigned to let us peasants know anything about the current ACTA negotations, I was interested to see New Zealand's government releasing a statement, which contained the following:
Participants agreed to continue consulting with stakeholders through domestic processes, share the results of these consultations at their next meeting, and to continue exploring opportunities for stakeholder consultations in connection with future ACTA meetings.
Ah, right; but I don't suppose the stakeholders in those "domestic processes" include mugs like you and me, do they?
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