Waterboarding? It's Torture...
So says Christopher Hitchens - from first-hand experience.
02 July 2008
From Smashup to Mashup
As somebody who is not wont to restrain himself when the UK government gets it hideously wrong on the IT front (hello, ID cards), it behoves me to offer a little praise when they get things right. This seems to be a rare and therefore welcome case of the latter:The UK Government wants to hear your ideas for new products that could improve the way public information is communicated. The Power of Information Taskforce is running a competition on the Government's behalf, and we have a £20,000 prize fund to develop the best ideas to the next level. You can see the type of thing we are are looking for here.
To show they are serious, the Government is making available gigabytes of new or previously invisible public information especially for people to use in this competition. Rest assured, this competition does not include personal information about people.
We're confident that you'll have more and better ideas than we ever will. You don't have to have any technical knowledge, nor any money, just a good idea, and 5 minutes spare to enter the competition.
This is absolutely the kind of stuff that the powers-that-be should be encouraging. I'm not exactly wildly optimistic it will lead to a sea-change in their attitude to openness in general, but it's start. If you've ever had to suppress that wild urge to (s)mash up the UK government - and let's face it, who hasn't? - here's your big chance.
playthegameforopenjournalism.org
One of the daftest URLs I've seen in a long time, but interesting to see the "open" meme here.
01 July 2008
30 June 2008
Morphic Resonance of Our Times
There’s no question in my mind that the woes of the journalism profession today have been at least partially self-inflicted. At the very historical moment that the news pros faced relentless new scrutiny from a vast army of dedicated amateur watchdogs and expert critics, they offered up a relentless sequence of missteps and disasters. Some were failures of professionalism, from the Jayson Blair meltdown to the Dan Rather screwup. But the biggest — the absence of a stiff media challenge to the Bush administration’s Iraq war misinformation campaign — was a failure of civic responsibility. With that failure, the professionals forfeited their claim to special privilege or unique public role as challengers of official wrongdoing and ferreters of truth. The democracy still needs these roles filled, of course. But after the Iraq bungle, the professional journalists’ claim to own them exclusively became much harder to accept.
What struck me about this insightful comment was that it seems to parallel something at a deeper level. Consider this slight re-write:But the biggest — the absence of a stiff political challenge to the Bush administration’s use of torture — was a failure of moral responsibility. With that failure, America forfeited its claim to special privilege or unique international role as a challenger of global wrongdoing and champion of justice. The world still needs these roles filled, of course. But after the Guantanamo/Abu Ghraib bungle, America's claim to own them exclusively became much harder to accept.
Do As I Say, Not As I Do
I've noted several times on this blog the tension between openness and privacy, but reading the excellent Your Right to Know blog - which, to my shame, I've only come across recently - another dimension became apparent.
This is the interesting contrast between what UK politicians want to do to us in terms of constant surveillance and intrusion into our private lives, and their own - outraged - refusal to allow us to do the same, even when it concerns them spending our money through their extremely generous allowances. For example, try this for hypocrisy:However, I should tell those who press and press such issues that, sooner or later, the allowances will be rolled into our salary, handed out without any claim mechanism or dealt with under some other device, because it is intolerable that this intrusion into Members’ private lives should have to be endured or should be permitted, and something will happen to prevent it from going too far. We can see what will happen: local news reporters and local political opponents will start trying to air these issues in public, which will be demeaning, as well as reducing the stature of Parliament and damaging our democracy. It cannot be right that things should reach such lengths.”
Russian Schools Project Update
Although not much noise has been made about it, the Russian migration of schools to free software is potentially a hugely important project. Here's an update:The pilot project to migrate schools of three Russian regions to Free Software has recently expanded its geography. Now it is possible for the schools outside of Tatarstan, Perm krai and Tomsk region to voluntarily apply for participation by completing a special form (Russian) published on the project website.
The project, if successful, may be the first step towards large-scale migration of Russian secondary education instutitions and, consequently, of the other state agencies to Free Software as President Medvedev stated last year (Russian) while being the First Deputy Prime Minister.
Note the comment at the end of the second paragraph there: Russian could become a real leader in this field.
Crowdsourcing Repression
Fun things to do with the Internet:According to Ms Eberlein, the term “human flesh search engine”, a literal translation of the Chinese, was first coined in 2001 when an entertainment website asked users to track down film and music trivia.
With 210 million Chinese wired up to the internet, it was a powerful concept. It quickly caught on and came to be used as a tool to punish the perpetrators of extra-marital affairs, domestic violence and morality crimes.
28 June 2008
Will the EU Ever Stand up for Its Citizens?
This spinelessness is just sickening in the extreme:The United States and the European Union are nearing completion of an agreement allowing law enforcement and security agencies to obtain private information — like credit card transactions, travel histories and Internet browsing habits — about people on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
The potential agreement, as outlined in an internal report obtained by The New York Times, would represent a diplomatic breakthrough for American counterterrorism officials, who have clashed with the European Union over demands for personal data. Europe generally has more stringent laws restricting how governments and businesses can collect and transfer such information.
- Laws which are apparently being chucked away purely because America wants to disregard them. This is what happens when European governments mouth fatuities about the so-called "war on terror": they then get hoist by their own rhetorical petard.
What's amazing is that probably 90% of Europeans would be against giving this kind of data to the US if they were ever offered any way to choose. Which they won't be, of course: that's democracy?
27 June 2008
Why The Economist is Clueless, Part 2353
A new business model: give away the game and charge avid players for extras
Well, "new" aside from the fact that free software has been using it in various forms for over 20 years....
Back-Door Maximalist Intellectual Monopolies
This looks like a very serious attempt to bring in maximalist intellectual monopolies through an agreement called SECURE under the aegis of the World Customs Organisation (sic) :Susan Sell, director of the Institute for Global and International Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs in Washington, DC, said in a recent paper (available here [pdf]) that the SECURE aims were “TRIPS-plus-plus,” referring to extending beyond the scope of the 1994 World Trade Organization Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS). “These new anti-counterfeiting and enforcement initiatives are just the latest mechanisms to achieve the maximalists’ abiding goal of ratcheting up IP protection and enforcement worldwide,” she said.
Viviana Muñoz Tellez of the intergovernmental South Centre said in the South Centre Bulletin (16 April 2008 issue [pdf]) that the SECURE working group seems to be “setting new standards of intellectual property enforcement through the back door,” and that this “may extend beyond the WCO mandate.” Separately, she told Intellectual Property Watch that standards presented as voluntary could become mandatory down the line. “Soft law,” she said in the article, “is often the basis on which ‘hard law’ is later established.”
And if that's not bad enough, there's a couple more details:
Other concerns of Sell’s are that the standards would extend monitoring to all IP, as opposed to just trademark and copyright, and would free IP rights holders from the burden of providing evidence that there is infringement “initiate a procedure.”
Patents would be turned into a customs issue (whaaat?), and there would be no need actually to show that an infringement happened in order to start a "procedure".... In other words, this SECURE (and for the name, see here) is about extending the RIAA's intimidatory tactics to the whole of intellectual monopolies, and globally.
But wait, there's more:There also was substantive concern that rights holders, such as industry trade associations, were participating in WCO meetings at the same level as member states, to the extent of having their own vice-chair. Muñoz’s article characterised their involvement as “on equal footing” with members, and said they can “equally suggest draft language.”
...
“We’ve been very open with the public,” he added, about the allowance of private sector stakeholders in the meetings. What is unique about the way that WCO meetings are run is that observers may speak and express opinions once members have spoken. This is in contrast to the WTO and WIPO, where observers generally only offer comment if asked to, or with express permission of a meeting chair.
So, the industries mostly closely involved with intellectual monopolies are helping shape the agreement alongside the government organisations. Well, that's sure to produce a balance, isn't it?
26 June 2008
Sharing: "Totally Cool"
Someone else who gets it:“It’s ok, if one person buys it, it’s totally cool, burn it up, share it with your friends, I don’t care. I don’t care how you hear it as long as you hear it. As long as you come to my show, and have a great time listening to the live show it’s totally cool. I don’t mind. I’m happy that they hear it.”
25 June 2008
Lil' Dubya Puts His Fingers in His Ears
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.)
The "Eye-Pea" Trick
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.)
BBC iPlayer 2.0 = iPlayer 1.0?
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.
Where Sun Doesn't Shine
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.
Lulu.com for Magazines
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.)
The Tipping Point (For the Last Time)
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.
Eee PC + Debian = Ultraportable Heaven?
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.)
Searching for the Truth About Search Engines
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.)
24 June 2008
Fewer EU Patents: Good - and Bad
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.
O (English) Rose, Thou Art Sick
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.)
NVidia's Unenviable Pariahdom
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.
23 June 2008
The Lurking Danger: Software Patents
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.
Good Bill, Bad Bill
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.
20 June 2008
Getting a Handle on EU OSS
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.
Chinese Whispers
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."
And Now Ashley....
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!
Associated Press Hoist By Its Own Petard
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.
19 June 2008
Erwin Is A-goin'
Erwin Tenhumberg has been one of the closest observers of OpenOffice.org's growing strength. So his announcement that he is moving from Sun - a company that, for all its faults, really seems to get open source - to SAP, a company, for all its strengths, seems utterly witless in this area, surprised me.
I suppose it would be too much to hope that SAP has finally got a clue....
18 June 2008
Our Chains Will Make Us Free
How Orwellian is this:
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has defended the apparatus of the UK's emerging surveillance society as the means to bring liberty to the people.
Britain's infamous identity cards, CCTV, biometrics and DNA scanners will make people more free by making them more secure, he said yesterday in defence of his security strategy.
Brown has seriously lost it.
Open Access Increases Its Impact
Unless you're an academic, you probably don't care about "impact factors", but for the world of academic journals - and the people who publish there - it's a matter of life and death (sadly.) Think of them as a kind of Google PageRank for publishing.
Anyway, the news that the trail-blazing Public Libary of Science titles have increased their impact factors is important:The latest impact factors (for 2007) have just been released from Thomson Reuters. They are as follows:
PLoS Biology - 13.5
PLoS Medicine - 12.6
PLoS Computational Biology - 6.2
PLoS Genetics - 8.7
PLoS Pathogens - 9.3
As we and others have frequently pointed out, impact factors should be interpreted with caution and only as one of a number of measures which provide insight into a journal’s, or rather its articles’, impact. Nevertheless, the 2007 figures for PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine are consistent with the many other indicators (e.g. submission volume, web statistics, reader and community feedback) that these journals are firmly established as top-flight open-access general interest journals in the life and health sciences respectively.
The increases in the impact factors for the discipline-based, community-run PLoS journals also tally with indicators that these journals are going from strength to strength. For example, submissions to PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics and PLoS Pathogens have almost doubled over the past year - each journal now routinely receives 80-120 submissions per month of which around 20-25 are published. The hard work and commitment of the Editors-in-Chief and the Editorial Boards (here, here and here) are setting the highest possible standards for community-run open-access journals.
This matters because many sceptics of open access would love PLoS to fail - either financially, in terms of academic influence or, ideally, both - and its continuing ascendancy in terms of impact factors is essentially a validation of the whole open access idea. And that has to be good for everyone, whether they care about academic PageRanks or not.
It's In the Diary, Erik
Interesting post from Erik Huggers, ex-Microsoft bloke now Group Controller, BBC Future Media & Technology, called "My First Linux Desktop":Over the last two decades I have used every flavour of Windows and Mac OS, but till now had never used a Linux desktop.
My only encounter with Linux has been flashing my wifi access point with dd-wrt firmware (which is great btw) but that is obviously not the same thing!
George Wright recently convinced me to take home a laptop with Fedora9 installed.
...
I am glad that I got a chance to test drive Fedora and as a result have come to believe in the potential of Linux as a mainstream operating system.
As Ashley said in this post last year the BBC does a lot of work with open standards already but in the future we plan to do more.
We want to make iPlayer work on all operating systems including open source ones like Fedora and I am confident we'll make good progress on this before the end of the year.
End of the year, eh? We'll be there.
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