ODF Heats Up in Chile

One of the ironies of the free software world is that it is global - development is carried out around the world, 24 hours a days - and yet there is a terrible cultural bias in terms of the news that is reported, which tends to be almost exclusively about anglophone developments.

Take Chile, for example: how much do we know about free software activities there? Speaking personally, I have to admit, nothing. But that will change, because I've come across this great site called Hombros de Gigantes (Shoulders of Giants), written by Jens Hardings, a full time researcher and professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Here's a good example of the stuff it runs:

Many eyes are paying attention to what is happening in Massachusetts with the Open Format requirement.

...

One of the things I would like to spread a lot more than it is known is the fact that we have very similar requirements in Chile to the ones being put forward in Massachsetts’ Enterprise Technical Reference Model.

Hot news from Chile indeed.

On Faking It in the Web 2.0 Era

This is so true:

One interesting thing is - while its ludicrously easy to fake a resume, its actually pretty hard to fake a blog, because sustaining a pretence over time is much harder than doing so with one static document.

Right: that's why they're such bloomin' hard work.

Books Be-Googled

I've not really been paying much attention to the Google Book Search saga. Essentially, I'm totally in favour or what they're up to, and regard publishers' whines about copyright infringement as pathetic and wrong-headed. I'm delighted that Digital Code of Life has been scanned and can be searched.

It seems obvious to me that scanning books will lead to increased sales, since one of the principal obstacles to buying a book is being uncertain whether it's really what you want. Being able to search for a few key phrases is a great way to try before you buy.

Initially, I wasn't particularly excited by the news that Google Book Search now allows public domain books to be downloaded as images (not as text files - you need Project Gutenberg for that.) But having played around with it, I have to say that I'm more impressed: being able to see the scan of venerable and often obscure books is a delightful experience.

It is clearly an important step in the direction of making all knowledge available online. Let's hope a few publishers will begin to see the project in the same light, and collaborate with the thing rather than fight it reflexively.

Fighting Global Warming With Our Forks

One of things I love is understanding how things fit together. Here's an interesting little, ah, tidbit:

What many people do not know, however, is that the production of meat also significantly increases global warming. Cow farms produce millions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane per year, the two major greenhouse gases that together account for more than 90 percent of U.S. greenhouse emissions, substantially contributing to "global scorching."

And not only that, but:

Additionally, rainforests are being cut down at an extremely rapid rate to both pasture cows and grow soybeans to feed cows. The clear-cutting of trees in the rainforest -- an incredibly bio-diverse area with 90 percent of all species on Earth -- not only creates more greenhouse gases through the process of destruction, but also reduces the amazing benefits that those trees provide.

So, basically, with every mouthful of meat, we are destroying not one, but two commons: the atmosphere and the rainforests. Time to pass the tofu, methinks....

A Blogalicious Roundup

With all the frenzied blogging activity that is going on, it's easy to lose track of who's doing what and why. That makes this Business 2.0 feature all-the-more valuable. Despite it's rather vulgar title - "Blogging for Dollars" (yes, shocking, I know) - it's actually one of the best mini-histories of the big-name bloggers.

For example, I've always wondered how TechCrunch's Mr Arrington managed his stratospheric rise from zero to blogger hero in a bare 12 months; now I learn that he comes with quite a pedigree:

Arrington, a 36-year-old entrepreneur behind a long list of unrecognizable startups, has suddenly become one of the rising stars of Silicon Valley.

...

Arrington also stumbled into the blog business. He was tossing back drinks at a bachelor party in Belgrade in 2005 when another Silicon Valley entrepreneur called with an idea for a startup based on the new technologies that have come to be lumped together as Web 2.0. Arrington began doing research about the emerging tech trend. He couldn't find one comprehensive source, and as he compiled his information, he decided to post it on a blog. "It was purely a hobby," he says.

This also explains what I see as TechCrunch's biggest problem: its reluctance to call a dog a dog. Too often reviews end with some mealy-mouthed cop-out along the lines of "well, I can't quite see what the point of this me-too video Web 2.0 site is, but it's not bad and maybe somebody will like it", which is less than helpful. (Maybe this is why I love The Reg - there's nothing like a bit of sarky Brit journo bile.)

The rest of the piece has other useful backgrounders on the alpha bloggers. Do read it if you care about any of them. If you don't, well, er, don't. (Via TechMeme.)

Why ID Cards Are Idiotic: the Internal Attack

Sigh.

When are people going to learn that creating super-databases simply makes them super-irresistible - not least to the people authorised to use them? For example:

Office staff are hacking into the department's computers, putting at risk the privacy of 40million people in Britain.

The revelation undermines Government claims that sensitive information being collected for its controversial ID Cards scheme could not fall into criminal hands.

The security breaches occurred at the Identity and Passport Service, which is setting up the National Identity Register to provide access to individuals' health, financial and police records as part of the £8billion ID card scheme scheduled to begin in 2008.

(Via TechDirt.)

Security Engineering - the Book

I've mentioned Ross Anderson before in this blog, and my own failed attempt to interact with him. But I won't let a little thing like that get in the way of plugging his book Security Engineering - especially now that it can be freely downloaded. If you want to know why that's good news, try reading the intro to said tome, written by the other Mr Security, Bruce Schneier. (Via LWN.net.)

OpenOffice.org Premium

Now here's an idea. Take something that's free, and add value to it without adding to the price. Enter OpenOffice.org Premium:

What's new?
* Clip Art (currently more than 2,800 objects)
* Templates (number varies by language)
* Samples (number varies by language)
* Documentation (if available)
* Fonts (more than 90 fonts)

It's bigger, and it may be better for some. In any case, it's free. (Via Linux and Open Source Blog.)

Why Analysts Are a Waste of Skin, Part III

Because they admit it themselves. (Via TechDirt.)

Enter the Chumby

A glorified alarm clock is not what you might expect to meet on this blog, but Chumby is rather different:

Introducing chumby, a compact device that can act like a clock radio, but is way more flexible and fun. It uses the wireless internet connection you already have to fetch cool stuff from the web: music, the latest news, box scores, animations, celebrity gossip...whatever you choose. And a chumby can exchange photos and messages with your friends. Since it's always on, you’ll never miss anything.

Interesting that wireless can now be taken for granted. Even more interesting that the system is hackable in just about every sense:

For the true geek, the electronics are "hackable," the case is removable. Your chumby can look however you like (bling-it-yourself or choose from 3rd party options). Stay tuned — who knows what creative programmer-types will make it do?

And, of course, the code is hackable too. And hackable code means one thing: a GNU/Linux core.

Whether the world needs Chumbies remains to be seen, but it's clear that the world needs free software to make them. (Via TechCrunch.)

The UK Biobank Time-bomb

It sounds so exciting, so good:

UK Biobank is a long-term project aimed at building a comprehensive resource for medical researchers. The full project will get underway in 2006, when it will begin to gather information on the health and lifestyle of 500,000 volunteers aged between 40 and 69.

Following consent, each participant will be asked to donate a blood and urine sample, have some standard measurements (such as blood pressure) and complete a confidential lifestyle questionnaire. Over the next 20 to 30 years UK Biobank will allow fully approved researchers to use these resources to study the progression of illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease. From this they hope to develop new and better ways of preventing, diagnosing and treating such problems.

Data and samples will only be used for ethically and scientifically approved research. Issues such as consent, confidentiality, and security of the data are guided by an Ethics and Governance Framework overseen by an independent council chaired by Professor Alastair V. Campbell of Bristol University.

But read the access policy, and you find this:

Access will not be permitted for police or forensic use except where required by court order. It is likely that UK Biobank will take steps to resist access for police or forensic use, in particular by seeking to be represented in all court applications for access in order to defend participants’ trust and public confidence in UK Biobank.

Since court orders can always be taken for granted given the right legislative framework, and since the current UK Government already has such a poor track record for invasive laws that create such frameworks, what this means in practice is that anyone taking part in this otherwise laudable scheme is creating a biological time-bomb.

Inside the main UK Biobank database will be their DNA, just waiting for somebody, someday - perhaps long after their death - to obtain that court order. Then, practically everything genomic about them will be revealed: genetic propensities, biological relationships, you name it. And, of course, it will provide the authorities with a reliable way of tracking them and, to a lesser extent all their children, for ever.

I am sure that the UK Biobank will fight this kind of use; and I am equally sure that they will lose. Which is why my DNA will only form part of such a database over my dead body. Probably literally.

Amazon Goes Virtual

I was deeply unimpressed when Amazon announced its Simple Storage Service (S3), since I am not a developer, but the news that it is now rolling out a sister beta service, called the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), made me sit up and take notice. Not so much for this:

Just as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) enables storage in the cloud, Amazon EC2 enables "compute" in the cloud. Amazon EC2's simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon's proven computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use.

Which is all very well, but what really interested me was something I suspected might be the case:

Q: What operating system environments are supported?

Amazon EC2 currently supports Linux-based systems environments. Amazon EC2 currently uses a virtualization technology which only works with Linux environments. We are looking for ways to expand it to other platforms in future releases.

Think about it: Amazon, not a small or unknown company, is creating an on-demand, virtualised computing facility, and it has GNU/Linux at its heart, just as predicted.

Maybe it won't take off, but if it does - or if another GNU/Linux-based company like Google, say, follows, suit - we will be witnessing yet another serious nail in the coffin of the traditional operating system as the fundamental, underlying platform for computing. And we all know what that means, don't we? (Via GigaOm.)

It's a Bubble, but Not as We Know It.

John Battelle's Searchblog has become a little, er, sparse recently: I fear his other projects are taking up rather more of his time these days. But every now and then he comes out with a wise and succinct discussion of a major issue that makes hanging in there worthwhile.

His piece "Failure to Fail" is one of them, and sums up nicely my own feelings: it's a bubble, Jim, but not as we know it.

Inside a Freenigma

Freenigma is something that I have sought for ages: a way to send encrypted email from my webmail accounts - without having to do all the hard crypto-stuff, or indeed anything, really. Freenigma promises to do all this and more - see the FAQ for details. It's based on GnuPG, only works with Firefox:

In the initial step, we support only the Firefox browser. However, we are already working on an implementation for the Internet Explorer, which we will only release if we receive enough requests for it. To be honest, we would prefer all our users to use Firefox because, due to the open source code, it is more trustworthy than proprietary products. Furthermore, the browser is available for all platforms (Linux, Mac, Windows).

It is, of course, completely free (premium services are in the offing, apparently.)

I've only just signed up, so I can't report on how well it works, but once I've used it in anger, I'll provide an update. As unnecessary government surveillance becomes more common, programs like Freenigma will sadly become more necessary.

Zend, Zend, Zend

News that Zend is picking up a fat bunch of VC dosh is no suprise: PHP is consisently one of the most popular options for the LAMP stack. What's more interesting is what they are going to spend it on:

“The new funds will enable us to expand faster in emerging geographical markets, accelerate our product development and extend the services organization to meet the demands of our growing number of enterprise PHP customers,” said Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, the co-founders of Zend Technologies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah: but what are you really going to do with it? (Via Matt Asay.)

Desktop GNU/Linux: Hot and Not

If there's a tech meme of the moment, it's the GNU/Linux desktop, and whether it's viable. I've weighed in with my own slightly tangential views on the subject, but what's good to have is something a little more factual.

Surveys are always dodgy because of the scope for manipulation, but the one run by DesktopLinux.com has the huge advantage that it's being run and analysed by Steven Vaughan-Nichols, one of the very best open source journalists around. You can read the first of a series of his analyses here.

Wired's Wikified Wiki Words Work?

This is one of those things that you just want to work.

Wired has put up one of its stories - on wikis - to be freely edited by anyone. Or rather anyone who registers: this seems to be a threshold requirement to stop random vandalism as experienced the last time this was tried.

Judging by the results, the registration barrier seems to be working. The piece is eminently readable, and shows no evidence (as I write) of desecration. Maybe the wiki world is growing up. (via Many-to-Many.)

Open Source Audio Books

A nice piece in the New York Times about audio books based on public domain titles. Two points are worth noting. One is the following comment:

While some listeners object to the wide variety of recording quality, Mr. McGuire said, "our take on it is if you think a recording is done badly, then please do one and we’ll post it as well."

Which is classic open source stuff: don't like something? - do it better, mate.

The other point is that these audio books are truly open: since the source code (text) is public domain, anybody could alter it, and then record the variant. Probably best to start with a short text, but it could be an interesting experiment.

Free Software Directory Hits 5000...Almost

The number "5000" may not be a canonical one to celebrate, but the news that the Free Software Directory is about to hit 5000 entries is worth mentioning, if only because it's not as well known as it should be. After all, GNU software forms the backbone of free software, and so the directory is a natural first port of call when you're looking for some cool tools.

Interesting to note, too, the UNESCO co-branding (though I'm sure Richard Stallman wouldn't quite phrase it like that), part of the UN's increasing awareness and involvement with free software.

Testing, Testing....

Normal service will be resumed shortly. Please note that some posts will be in the nature of catch-ups, and hence their content may well already be familiar to you. Thank you for your patience.

Intermission

There will now be a short intermission, during which albatross will be available from the usherettes. Normal service will be resumed on the 30th August, if not before.

A Licence to Print...Licences

Licensing lies at the heart of free software. Indeed, it could be argued that Richard Stallman's greatest legacy is the GNU GPL, since that first showed how to preserve the essential liberty of free software, and how to deal with free-riders. But as well as a boon, licences are also a bane: there are too many of the damn things, which is why I was a little unkind to the Honest Public Licence idea, good in itself.

In a way, it's surprising that it has taken the open source world so long to do some navel-gazing and look closely at the state of open source licences. The result, a draft of the License Proliferation Committee Report, makes fascinating reading.

Originally, the LP Committee started to divide the OSI approved licenses into "recommended," "non-recommended" and "other" tiers. As we met and discussed, however, it became apparent that there is no one open source license that serves everyone's needs equally well. Some people like copyleft. Some don't. Governmental bodies have specific needs concerning copyright rights. As we discussed which licenses should be "recommended," it became clear that the recommended licenses were really the same as licenses that were either widely used (for example the GPL), or that had a strong community (for example Eclipse). Thus, we switched from the "recommended"/"non-recommended" terminology to a more descriptive terminology of:

-Licenses that are popular and widely used or with strong communities

-Special purpose licenses

-Licenses that are redundant with more popular licenses

-Non-reusable licenses

-Other/Miscellaneous licenses

We thought that these more descriptive categories may help people initially picking a license to use one of the more popular licenses, thereby helping to reduce the numbers of different licenses commonly used. We realize that the majority of open source projects currently use the GPL and that the GPL does not always play well with other licenses. We also realize that the GPL is a great license choice for some people and not so great a license choice for others. Thus, we can't just recommend that everybody use the GPL.. While such a recommendation would solve the license proliferation problem, it is not realistic.

We encourage new licensors to use licenses in the "popular and strong communities" group if any licenses in that group fit their needs. There are only nine licenses in this group and if everyone considered these licenses first when choosing a license for their project, some of the issues relating to license proliferation would diminish.

What's particularly interesting is that there are just nine licences in the "popular and strong communities" group, and that they are mainly the ones you'd expect:

- Apache License, 2.0

- New BSD license

- GNU General Public License (GPL)

- GNU Library or "Lesser" General Public License (LGPL)

- MIT license

- Mozilla Public License 1.1 (MPL)

- Common Development and Distribution License

- Common Public License

- Eclipse Public License

Most of these are well known; the only "strange" ones are the Common Public License, an early IBM choice, and Sun's Common Development and Distribution License.

Also of note is the Wizard Project:

The wizard assists new licensors in choosing which licenses meet their goals. The wizard also lets licensors find licenses that almost meet their goals. We hope that being able to generate a list of existing licenses that meet defined goals will lessen the need for people to create their own new licenses.

This is very similar to a tool available on the Creative Commons site. Indeed, it's hard not to get the feeling that on this occasion the open source world is generally following developments in the open content world - not necessarily a bad thing, and a sign of the growing maturity of the latter.

The Writely Way to Work

For a while now, my daily desktop has been filled with almost nothing but Firefox windows, each of which contains a healthy/unhealthy half-dozen tabs. One of these, is Gmail, which takes care of my email. Another is Bloglines, which gives me that reassuringly constant flow of information. For my own blogging, I pour straight into Blogger. In fact, aside from the odd MP3 player, about the only other app that I use constantly is the OpenOffice.org word processor, Writer.

Maybe not for much longer.

For Writely, Google's Web-based word processor, has finally opened its registration to all (I stupidly missed the first round). Having tried it on and off today, I have to say I'm totally impressed.

As a writer, I depend on my word-processor to do the things I need, the way I need, and then to get out of the way. Writely seems to manage this. Since my technical demands are very limited - as a pure word-machine I almost never use anything fancy in the way of images, tables or boxes, although I do demand .odt support, which Writely provides - it may well be that Writely is all I will ever require.

Moreover, it offers one huge and unique advantage for me: it will let me work on any of my PCs, on any platform, without the need to copy across and sync files constantly. In time, I expect that this will extend to things like mobile phones, too; clearly, this kind of platform- and device- independence is the Writely way to work.

Half the Web 2.0 Story

Here's a clever idea: put together a list of the top 1000 or so Web 2.0 sites, ordered by traffic rank. What's included?

For our purposes, my definition is that most of these companies are, as the wikipedia says, sites that "let people collaborate and share information online in a new way." So, Google doesn't make the cut, because most of their traffic comes to their search engine. eBay is an "old" company, but the many-to-many nature of the site means that they do.

Sounds reasonable.

But what about the ranking the site uses? Well, that's according to Alexa traffic rank. Now, I'm a huge fan of Alexa, and even more of Mr. Alexa, Brewster Kahle.

But.

There's a big problem with Alexa's figures, in that they draw on the Alexa Toolbar, and the toolbar is only available for Internet Explorer (Alexa offers some alternatives for Firefox users, but they are not real substitutes). This means that the rankings are seriously skewed towards what the more conservative part of the online world does - precisely the last people you would ask about Web 2.0.

Only half the Web 2.0 story, then, but I suppose it's a start.

Openness, "Terror" and 1984

One of my earliest posts on this blog was about Craig Murray and how he was using his blog to get out into the open ideas and information uncomfortable to the British Government. Well, he's at it again, dealing with issues that the mainstream media once again seems strangely loth to discuss.

This time, he's offering a rather different interpretation of the alleged UK plot to blow up planes. The basic idea is simple: that the revelation of this plot took place when it did because it was politically expedient to do so, not because of any inner necessity based on the state of the preparations. As well as the obviously convenient disappearance of the war in Lebanon from the front pages for a while, it also provided ammunition for Dick Cheney in his attacks on a particular strand of thought in the Democratic Party (read the post for the details).

More generally, the dramatic "thwarting" of the alleged plot provides yet another "justification" for draconian security measures, on the basis that it is better to lose a bit of liberty than all of your life. But of course, this convenient equation only works if the perceived threat is great enough, which requires, in its turn, a steady supply of reminders about the potential horrors of terrorism (which are real enough). The fact that few alleged terrorists have actually been convicted, even among the people that have been arrested, suggests that things are not what they seem.

Similarly, the strange "error" of releasing the names of most of the people held in the current "emergency" - which means that there is no hope whatsoever of convicting them, given UK laws - can be seen as a convenient way to have your terrorist cake and eat it: in a blaze of publicity you get to arrest people that are later quietly released because of some terrible "blunder" by some Bank of England functionary.

The only difference between this situation and the one painted by George Orwell in 1984 is that, today, squaring up to Big Brother we have the Big Blogosphere.