What Comes After the Windows Era?
On Linux Journal.
15 August 2008
14 August 2008
Gawd Bless Whingeing Brits
Britons are still not convinced the 2012 London Olympic Games will be a success, according to a new survey.
Only 15% of the 2,006 people who were quizzed online think the Games will be good for the United Kingdom's international reputation.
That's the kind of attitude we want to see, none of this pathetically up-beat 加油 nonsense....
From Great Firewall to Great Flamethrower
Brilliant analysis of why the Internet has not led to the huddled masses of China seeing "the light", but rather led to them seeing red over mistakes in Western coverage. Interestingly, it's specifically about Russia, but applies equally to China - which suggests that this is going to be an important technique widely used by authoritarian regimes as away of taming the Internet through stoking up an anti-Western nationalism:One of the chief ways to create such a climate was to fund the proliferation of sites that would selectively pick reports from the Western media, translate them into Russian, and offer ample space for commentary, often resulting in many articles amassing thousands of comments from angry Russians. The primary pillars of this e-smear campaign in Russia have been sites like Inosmi.ru (a shorthand for "Foreign Media", owned by the infamous RIA Novosti agency) and, to a lesser extent, Inopressa.ru (a shorthand for "Foreign Press", it belongs to Newsru agency ).
These sites would typically pick a dozen articles from the foreign media - mostly American and British, but also that of the Baltic states and Eastern Europe - and translate them into Russian. Needless to say, they usually do their best to pick the most heinous articles, most of them full of bad reporting and stereotypes about Russia. This may seem relatively innocent but Inosmi has quickly gained a large following, which particularly delights in commenting on articles, mostly to report on inaccuracies in the articles and ignorance of their authors.
Sites like Inosmi do their best perpetuate the myth of the "great brainwashing" -- that the Western media is either utterly biased against Russia or simply incompetent - and that the Western public and policy-makers are being constantly kept in the dark as to the true nature of things in Russia (this in itself is quite comical, as Russians themselves squandered most of their independent media in the early Putin years; arguably, they are in much greater darkness).
Understanding this makes it easier to counter - for example, by translating articles in Chinese and Russian into English, so that people on the other side can see and comment on the slants in reporting. Of course, the best approach would be for Western media to check for blatant errors *before* publishing....
British Libel Laws Violate Human Rights - UN
Ha!The British libel laws have come under attack from the United Nations committee on human rights for discouraging coverage of matters of major public interest. The use of the Official Secrets Act to deter government employees from raising important issues has also been criticised.
The intervention by the UN comes in the wake of international disquiet over the use of British courts for "libel tourism", whereby wealthy plaintiffs can sue in the high court in London over articles that would not warrant an action in their own country.
IOC Stays True to Olympic Spirit...
...the Beijing Olympics spirit, that is:
the IOC sent a take-down notice to YouTube for a video posted by Students for a Free Tibet.
The video, which showed a pro-Tibet candle-light vigil in New York City and images from the March protests in Tibet, was dutifully pulled by YouTube. However, it was unclear what infringement the IOC was claiming. Although their famous interlocking rings were briefly shown, that would seem to be a trademark, not covered by the DMCA. Even if they claimed the rings were copyrighted creative content, their creation in 1913 places them firmly in the public domain (on copyright, the trademark remains -- but the DMCA isn't for trademark). Luckily after a number of sites questioned the action, the IOC withdrew their complaint.
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.
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